Escape
by Mild Peril
Summary: Chase refuses to obey House, and House can't be having that. Investigations prove that something somewhat more sinister is going on.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I have been writing this on and off since about June, but didn't want to post until I had it finished, and now, finally, I think it pretty much is, save for some tweaking.

This revolves around a similar theme to my other House fic, a one shot, thought the two are not directly related. I don't quite know what has me so hooked on this theme, but I just sort of see this as one explanation of Chase's character. So let's just see where this goes. It won't be the same place as the last one… I sort of cut off the avenues there…

Warning: themes of suicide.

Disclaimer: I don't even own A House, let alone THE House, so any attempts to sue will prove tedious and fruitless.

Chase sat on the edge of the tub, dressed in a two day old t-shirt and a pair of sweat pants, his posture sagging, but his face set and blank. The bathroom was white, cold, sterile, the only light coming from the strip overhead. It was fitting. The pills rattled in the bottle. Chase was a doctor. He knew this wouldn't be the easiest way, the fastest way, the least painless way, but again, it seemed fitting. Chase had never really been one to take the easy way out. Perhaps his colleagues would disagree, but they only saw the outside of Chase, the carefully constructed front that was designed to make sure that no one could ever see the real Chase. What they saw might sometimes be cold, it certainly wasn't the most approachable of fronts, but what was beneath the surface was too ugly for anyone ever to see. It was hidden inside of him, his own twisted mind and his own twisted soul, coated by the sweet on the eye but icy to the touch exterior that everyone knew as Chase.

So no, he wasn't going to take the easiest way out. Maybe it was partly a result of all those years in which Catholic values has been drummed into his head. Sin, penance, suffering. Chase was no longer really sure what he believed in. He had come to the conclusion that whatever chance he had had for redemption had died long ago, so what was really the point in questioning it any further? Well, at least that was what he told himself. A part of him had still hoped for redemption, had still clung to faith, but recently, he had stopped allowing himself this comfort. He didn't deserve it.

But still, somewhere in his head, the morals persisted. Ironically, even though he was about to commit the most irredeemable of all sins, he still wanted to do it the Catholic way, if such a thing were possible. He would make sure he suffered for this final sin. It wouldn't be easy for him.

Chase slumped backwards into the bath tub and flipped the cap. It didn't feel quite real, but then, nothing in his life had felt truly real in a long time. He had once told House that it hurt less just not to care, but what he hadn't admitted at the time, not even to himself, was that it wasn't just his father that he was referring to, but his whole life. Over the years he had cut himself off from everything that was real and everything that was human. When, exactly, the process had begun, he couldn't identify. Did he have a natural predisposition, or had life warped him entirely? He couldn't be sure. It wouldn't surprise him if it was genetic. Neither of his parents had been the life and soul of the party. It didn't really matter; the end result was the same. Dead inside. A slight smile quirked the corner of his lips as he tipped the first pill into his palm, small white, rounded, sugar coated, innocent to the eye. A little bit like him, really. He contemplated it for a few moments, wondering if he would feel anything, anything at all. The faintest hint of remorse, sadness, repentance, anything that might convince him that he was still human enough to feel, that maybe this wasn't worth it. It didn't come. In a swift movement, he brought his hand to his mouth and gulped down the pill, before tipping a second pill into his hand.

Did House, he wondered, have the same destructive desires when he swallowed down his Vicodin? The Vicodin helped to make the pain go away. Well, Chase pondered, that was what he was aiming for too. Was House trying to numb the emotional pain just as much as the physical pain?

Chase blinked and swallowed the second pill, shaking the thoughts away. He had never really contemplated House's use of drugs before. He had observed on the surface, from a detached point of view, but had never judged, or tried to enter the psyche. House could live his life the way he wanted. Maybe part of the reason he had gone into medicine (there were so many, and so much could be read in to the decision, that it would be impossible to fully evaluate them all in the time that he had left), was a desire to fix the lives of others. House believed that was Cameron's objective, but at one time, he had had a bit of that in him too. The difference between him and Cameron was that he had long ago drowned out such naïve notions, whereas she still thrived on them. Maybe one day that would break her as it had broken him. Or maybe one day she would fix herself, or someone would do it for her, and she would no longer need to fix others.

Another pill ingested. He knew it would be a little while before he started to feel the effects. He shook a few more out into the palm of his hand and slammed them against his mouth, tilting his head back slightly to allow them to slide down his throat. He cringed slightly as they scratched against his oesophagus, eyes watering slightly as he fought the urge to cough. Chase idly wondered how House managed to avoid gastritis considering the number of pills he choked down dry. How many of them were accompanied by a glass of whisky, he asked himself as he tipped out more pills into the palm of his hand. The pills rattled feebly in comparison to the satisfying jangle that the bottle had made when full. But he wanted to be sure that he got the job done properly. This wasn't a plea for attention, conscious or otherwise. He hadn't wanted to be rescued in a long while, and he had realised even before that that could never happen. He had left seminary after he had realised that. Chase was perfectly secure with his intentions, and with what he had become. It was this that had led him to this action.

He shook the last of the pills into his hand. No turning back. He swallowed. Just an empty bottle of pills now. They should really learn not to give depressed patients large quantities of potentially lethal drugs, Chase reflected. Of course, sometimes they didn't. Sometimes they rationed them carefully so that the patient never had control of more than two or three at a time. But he was a doctor. And it was easy to fool the psychiatrist (young, inexperienced, still believed she could solve the problems of anyone through books and lengthy chats about childhood) into believing that he was a little down in the dumps, but still rational, still capable of feeling, that he wanted to help himself. He had only gone to her for the prescription. She had been carefully selected for that purpose. She didn't know his past. Most of it wasn't in a file anyway, and what first his father, and then he himself, hadn't been able to keep from the records, was firmly shut away in Australia for the time being. She had seen a doctor (whom she had felt more than a little attracted to), a man under stress, who was dealing with his problems legitimately and responsibly, unlike the hundreds of doctors who gradually destroyed their professional lives through reckless addictions.

More irony, Chase thought, dragging himself from the bath tub. Had he ever truly believed that America would be a new start, or had it always been the beginning of the end? Staggering slightly as he made his way into his bedroom, Chase realised with a combination of relief and satisfaction that the pills were starting to take effect. Dropping onto his bed, the rows of CDs that neatly filled the glass cabinet beside his bed caught his attention, and he had a urge to drown out the suddenly oppressive silence. His eyes were drawn towards a CD of Roman Catholic Church music, recorded at St Patrick's cathedral in Melbourne. In fact, his own voice was recorded on this CD, made at a time when his pure treble voice had made him one of the strongest assets of a nationally renowned choir. It was one of the few relics of his past that had made it to America with him. Flipping the CD over, Chase recalled the music as he read over the track listings. The Allegri Miserere caught his eye, a piece in which his own voice could be heard clearly singing out a piercing second octave C. In the times when he had been entrenched in the Church, that piece had always brought out the emotion in him, had always made him aware of the beauty of human life and emotion, even in sadness.

With an almost impulsive movement, he snapped the disk out of the case and inserted it into the player, forwarding through until he reached the Miserere before allowing himself to fall backwards awkwardly onto the bed, partly as a result of the pills, partly because he had already given up on life, so what was the point in elegant movements?

The sorrowful strains of music filled the room, and still Chase's eyes were empty as he stared up at the ceiling. If anything, the music aided the transition into the trance like state of emptiness. Only the encroaching effects of the drugs as he felt his slightly elevated heartbeat kept him from catatonia as the high notes soared through the air. Once he had rejoiced in the sad beauty of the peace; now, if anything, it was only slightly haunting, for a moment allowing vague recollections of a time when he had still had hope, life within him, the memories of which were so distant that he couldn't quite identify the feelings. It was miraculous that it stirred anything really. He hadn't thought he had anything left within him; the memories came as something of a surprise. He thought he had banished them long ago, forcing them into the furthest recesses of his mind until they were pushed out all together. Evidently his conscious efforts had not been as successful as he had believed.

He forced himself away from such thoughts. He didn't want anything to cloud his objectives, and more than that, he didn't want to stir any of the other memories, buried even deeper. This was only the beginning. With the pure tones still ringing out from the speakers, Chase allowed his mind to drift away from the present, until his thoughts became blurred and he fell into a drugged sleep.

* * *

He didn't know how much later it was that he woke up; he was too disorientated to make much out. All he knew was that his mouth was dry and that he felt like vomiting. He hadn't quite worked out why when he became aware of another sensation, the sensation that had woken him. Something was buzzing. After a moment or two, he rolled over onto his side and realised that it was his cell, which had been pressed against his side.

He looked at the caller display. House. It was instinct that caused him to answer. House was his boss. He did what he said almost unquestioningly. It was easier just to submit to House's wishes. He didn't have the energy to do anything else. Flipping the device open, he brought it to his ear, and stated croakily, "House."

"Wrong", the voice at the other end of the phone responded. "That's my name, not yours. When you answer the phone, you should say 'wombat'".

Chase squeezed his eyes shut as his mind came back into a sort of focus, albeit a slightly off focus. He had unplugged the landline, locked the door, switched off his computer. He had cut off all his lines of communication but one. Why the hell had answered the phone? How had he forgotten to turn it off? He wanted to do this without interruption, wanted to cut off all the lines of communication with the outside world to reinforce the fact that he didn't belong in it. Now he would have to put on a front.

"What do you want House? It's my day off," Chase replied wearily. Please, please just make him go away, he silently begged.

"Nice try. But when I say jump, you say how high, Ok wombat? Me, boss. You, slave. You get off on that, remember?" Chase sighed. Nothing was ever easy with House. Maybe that was partly why he had stuck around so long. Penance. You had to have an ulterior motive to stay with House. No one would work with him simply for the experience. Cameron wanted to fix him, Foreman wanted to prove himself, especially having learnt that House had hired him because of his record.

"I'm ill, House. I can't come in. It's against hospital policy." Chase asserted.

"Oh, don't let that bother you. Pretty much everyone here is sick! You'll fit right in. Besides, law suits are fun. So get your pretty ass in here. Now." Chase removed the phone from his ear. He was pretty sure he was about to throw up. This was a triviality anyway. None of it mattered any more. In a few hours, he wouldn't be here for House to harass any more. Resolutely, he pressed the red button once, then twice. Then he removed the battery for good measure before flopping over the side of the bed and vomiting violently.

* * *

House stared at the phone on his desk, the flat drone that the speaker emitted evidence that, for the first time in his life, Chase had directly disobeyed an order from House and hung up on him. His brow wrinkled slightly. This wasn't Chase's style. Chase had gone behind House's back before, but this directness simply wasn't him. Even if Chase was sick (and House had to admit, Chase hadn't sounded too good), he wouldn't have expected him to have dealt with it like that. He would have expected him to whinge for a few minutes and then give up and come in anyway.

House's brow wrinkled further as he turned to the board with a marker in hand and started to write out symptoms from the chart before him. Finishing off, he stared contemplatively at the board before him, but not seeing the symptoms. With a swift movement, House reached out for his jacket and gripped his cane as he turned towards the door.

At that moment, Cameron swung into view, her purposeful stride halting as she took in the sight of House looking ready to go out.

"You just paged me. Where-" she began to question.

"I'm taking a break." House cut her off. "You and Foreman can play together for a while. Symptoms on board, play nicely", he continued, not even turning to face her as he continued past her along the hallway. "If anyone asks, and by anyone I mean Cuddy, I'm doing the doctoring thing, sticking a needle in someone or something," he called as he stuck his cane out to hold the elevator doors opening before slipping into the car and heading downwards and out of the hospital.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Chase was in much the same position as he had been when he had hung up the phone an hour earlier when he heard the doorbell ring. He was only vaguely aware of it through the hazy sensations clouding his mind that felt like a strange combination of drunkenness and fever. He wondered for a while whether or not the doorbell ringing was simply a figment of his imagination. Tricyclic antidepressant overdose may lead to hallucinations, the doctor in him vaguely recalled.

The bell rang again. It didn't really matter, save for the fact that he would rather forget the existence of the outside world now. He didn't want anyone else to be dragged under with him. But whether a hallucination or not, he wasn't going to answer the door. More likely to be imaginary, the rational part of his brain, still just about distinguishable from the other whisperings within his mind, brought on by sensory overload, informed him. The only people that ever came round to his apartment were the landlady, the neighbours with the occasional piece of wrongly delivered post, or past one night stands, hoping for a second round, or something more. He never gave it to them.

At the sound of a familiar male voice, Chase was convinced he was hallucinating, and flopped back against the bed, covering his ears with a pillow and willing the delusion away. A louder rap persisted, and the voice grew louder.

"Go away, go away, go away," Chase mumbled into his pillow. He wasn't sure whether he was talking to himself or pleading with a real figure, outside of the door.

Another rap. Something hard was knocking against the door. The kind of noise a hard stick might make if it knocked against the door. Chase willed himself to focus on the words shouted, trying to distinguish between reality and the phantoms of his mind.

"Let me in, Chase. I know you're in there. If it's not me, then it'll be the police. You don't want a scene now do you?" The sarcastic tone was fitting. Please, dear god, be a hallucination, Chase willed, because if there was one thing House was definitely good at, it was causing a scene. And Chase was pretty sure he wouldn't be afraid to do so now.

"Little Pig! Little Pig! Let me come in, or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down," Yelled the voice. "Or apartment. Whatever, I'm not fussy," it added as an afterthought. Too late, thought Chase, he was pretty sure this already counted as a scene. Dragging himself off the bed unsteadily, Chase narrowly avoided stepping in the pool of vomit by the bedside. He could barely stand. Why did House have to be here?

Chase forced himself forwards and into the lounge of his apartment, almost falling sideways against his heavily chained front door.

"What do you want House? I told you, I'm sick," he called out as best as he could with his weakened voice.

"Well isn't this convenient, because you know what? I'm a doctor! So let me in and we can play hospitals!" House said through the door. Chase closed his eyes and tried to ignore the nausea that swelled within him, coursing through his bones and enveloping his sinuses, blending with the headache that had begun to develop. He had to last out at least until he could get rid of House.

"I have the flu. I'm contagious. No one can come in," he tried. Please, please, please, he found himself pleading again, just go away, leave me to die in peace.

"That's a risk I'm willing to take. Besides, if I get sick, then Cuddy can't make me do clinic duty! So all in all, a win win situation. Now let me in. It's not nice to force cripples to hang around standing up," House said in his sing song tone.

Chase sighed. "Just go away House", he half whispered. He was already broken. Why did the man always have to try and shatter the fragments?

"No," House answered shortly, "so are you going to let me in, or are the police going to?"

"Why would the police let you in?" Chase already knew the attempt was futile, but his remaining curiosity forced him to ask the question.

"Because I'm worried about my sick employee, and I just heard a nasty thud. Kind of like this." Chase jumped as House whacked his cane against the door and winced at the sarcasm in House's voice before turning and unlocking the chain, once again defeated by House. But he could do this act. He'd had enough practice. He could convince House he had the flu and send him on his way. Finally succeeding in fumbling the locks open, Chase shakily pulled back the door, refusing to meet House in the eye as he stood in front of him, hoping to block entrance to his apartment, at least symbolically. It proved to be ineffective, as House shoved Chase out of the way with his cane, almost sending Chase toppling into the wall.

"Why are you here, House?" He asked, unable to inject any real anger into his voice. The whole situation just felt too surreal. It would all be over soon anyway. None of it really mattered. But somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt a faint flutter of panic at the thought that House might ruin this, take away his control.

"Because…I care?" House half questioned. Chase raised his eyebrows. "Not convincing enough, huh? Tell me, what was it I did wrong? The voice? The face?" House continued. Chase was not in the mood for this. He had lived through enough of House's sarcasm, was well aware that there was a second meaning behind almost every word that came out of his mouth. All he wanted was peace to do this alone. He knew he had to hide that fact from House, or he might not succeed at all, but at the same time, it felt like it hardly mattered, because he was going to die, and then he wouldn't have to put up with House, nothing would matter any more. If House would just leave…

"Well you've seen that I'm sick, I can't come to work. Good enough?" Chase asked. As if to punctuate, he felt a tremor run through him, and sank down onto the couch to disguise the fact from House. He didn't want to draw too much attention to his physical condition. His flu explanation wouldn't hold up to much scrutiny.

House eyed Chase carefully, looking for clues. It didn't take long to find them. Chase had a pale sweaty sheen, and was clearly unsteady on his feet, and the way he kept screwing up his eyes suggested a headache. His voice was scratchy, and Chase winced when he tried to swallow. All symptomatic of the flu, as well as about a thousand other things. But there was no red nose, no tearing eyes, and no cough, and just yesterday, Chase had seemed fine. A little more acerbic than usual, but nothing that could be attributed to flu. House had his own theories.

"Sure," he eventually answered nonchalantly. "Mind if I use your bathroom?" He studied Chase for a response. Chase's jaw twitched ever so slightly.

"Look House, you're meant to be at work. From the early morning wake up call, I assume you have a case. So just… go." Chase insisted. He nearly tacked "now" on the end, but suspected that would only heighten House's obvious curiosity.

"Like I said, sure, but unless you want me to tinkle on your floor, I really suggest you let me use the bathroom first." House persisted. Chase's mind was in too much confusion to think entirely straight, so he couldn't get much beyond 'House can't use the bathroom'. Because the bathroom was through the bedroom, which was carpeted in vomit, and in the bathroom was the empty bottle, just waiting for House to stumble upon. Chase's insides churned with frustration. Why? Why was he here? Chase almost laughed at his own naivety. House always found a way to turn up where others didn't want him, especially when it came to Chase's personal life. Chase had never understood the psychology behind that, could never find anything to attribute it to except for House's own insatiable curiosity.

Chase snapped out of his thoughts to notice House reaching out for the door handle of his bedroom door.

"You can't go in there," he blurted out, immediately berating himself for his lack of subtlety.

"What, you got a hooker in there?" House questioned. "You know it's really not healthy to have sex when you have flu." He emphasised the word flu just enough to further fuel Chase's suspicion that House didn't buy his explanation. Well of course, why would he?

In a sudden movement, House lunged forwards into the bedroom. Chase made to get up, but immediately swayed and listed backwards, thumping back against the leather of the sofa.

"Ew. Chase puke. Gross," Chase heard House exclaim, now a bodiless voice out of Chase's vision. As if on cue, Chase once again felt the bile rise within his gut, now just acidic spittle. Chase tried rather unsuccessfully to lean towards the edge of the couch to allow the vile tasting liquid to escape. He didn't know why it mattered if he messed up his couch. Again, it was just one of those things that was burnt into his mind. With his mother, he had always had a bucket to hand. Unbidden, an image of her, face gaunt and white, dark hair matted and sticky with vomit, leaning over a bucket whilst he supported her, blood and bile trickling down her chin, sprung to the fore of his mind.

'Don't let them come, don't let them come', Chase chanted, unsure whether or not he was speaking aloud. He could feel his heart rate quicken, his breath come in gasps. He wasn't sure whether it was a result of the memories or the drugs.

"What have we here?" House gaily called. Chase supposed he had found the pill bottle. He was proved right as House emerged front the bedroom, the dark wood door swinging on his hinges as House again put his cane to good use.

Suddenly there was a change in House's demeanour, and the sarcastic front was gone. House looked angry. It was a side of House Chase rarely ever saw, and curiosity won out over fear, and he twisted a little more towards him from his pitiful position, half slumped on the couch and half off it all together.

"Did you take the whole bottle, Chase?" House ordered, his voice raised. Chase contemplated him, head cocked to the side.

"What do you care?" He challenged. "It doesn't matter to you, doesn't make any difference. So why don't you just leave me here to die in peace?" Chase spat the last word vehemently as again the bile began to rise in his throat. He choked, unable to get rid of the vomit, stifling his breathing. A hand gripped his head and turned it to the side and Chase drew in a ragged breath as the blockage dislodged. House maintained a firm grip on Chase's jaw, forcing his head into an unnatural position so that Chase couldn't break the eye contact.

"Do you want to die, Chase?" He asked, his voice now almost a whisper.

"I don't want to live!" Chase choked back.

"That's not what I asked," House responded, still tightly gripping Chase's jaw. For a moment, there was silence, and House was convinced that Chase was about to break down in tears, say no, and beg House to call an ambulance. But then,

"I want to die. Leave me to die." His voice was quiet, but clear. House was momentarily stunned. He had never heard a person utter those words with such conviction.

Abruptly, he loosened his grip and withdrew his hand. Without the support, Chase flopped almost lifelessly against the couch.

"Fine. I won't stop you," he answered, the nonchalant tone back. He sank back into a leather armchair.

Chase looked at him disbelievingly. It was getting harder and harder to think straight, let alone talk.

"Leave House," he managed to force out.

"Oh no. I'm here for the duration. Shame I didn't bring any popcorn." House shot back.

Chase involuntarily distorted his face. He knew that House could be cold, sometimes even bordering on sadistic, but he had no idea he would take it this far.

"This what you've – you've been waiting for all along? Waiting to see if I'd break, so you could… could witness the glorious breakdown?" He stumbled over the words as shivered and tremors overtook his body.

"There is no glory in death." House spoke the words quietly, staring at his hand as he fiddled with his cane, as if they were intended only for his own ears. They were echoes of words recited at another place, another time, with another dying body.

Chase felt his mind lose all grip of reality, and he surrendered to it. Not long. Did it really matter if House was here? Again, back to that question, did anything really matter now?

Chase sank back into the unconscious recesses of his mind.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: I will venture further into the psyche of House in this chapter. I hope I don't stray too far out of character for your liking, but bear in mind that what we see of House on the surface is most definitely not all there is to House. This is my explanation of what's going on beneath that…

House stared at the broken form lying in front of him on the couch, undignified, almost repulsive with the sticky covering of vomit, and the thick layer of sweat, the odours and sights mingling and assuaging his nostrils. Yet still, House could see in him now a vulnerability that he had never been allowed to see before, not so blatantly at least. It was usually hidden behind the carefully constructed mask, only occasionally poking through the surface in the guise of anger, or a colder than usual remark.

He hadn't wanted to see him break. If anything, he might have tried to save Chase from himself. But Chase had hidden his true self well. House hadn't realised he was so close to breaking point. He wondered if this was the first time. Had something happened? Had his father died? Or had Chase been teetering on the edge of the precipice for so long that it only took the slightest change of balance to tip him?

House watched as Chase's wrist, dangling over the edge of the couch, began to twitch. Hauling himself out of the armchair, he leaned forwards to lower Chase to the ground as his whole body entered the throes of a violent seizure. Inserting a pillow under his head, House pulled his cell out of his pocket and dialled 911, all the while subconsciously stroking the hair from Chase's forehead.

As House gave the operator the details, he felt the head stir, and looked down to see two clear blue eyes meet his own. He had never really believed that you could see sadness in nothing but the eyes of a person, but for a moment, something in Chase's might have convinced him otherwise. But then there was nothing but a cold emptiness, and a second later, the eyes slid shut altogether.

* * *

The paramedics arrived and loaded Chase into the ambulance, and all the while, House remained uncharacteristically silent, speaking only to inform the paramedics of Chase's condition, and to request that Chase be taken to Princeton General, rather than PPTH. He figured it was the least he owed Chase. House didn't want to probe too much into his own actions or Chase's that night. Chase was dying. House was a doctor. He had stopped him from dying. Or at least he was trying. Drug overdoses were unpredictable at best, and there was no telling what kind of damage Chase might have caused himself.

But for the moment, House couldn't face anything other than the medical facts. He refused to think of the way Chase had locked eyes with him and told him with utter sincerity that he wanted to die. He refused to think of the fact that he had lied to Chase and disobeyed his choices. And he refused to think of the consequences.

As the ambulance pulled into the bay at the ER of Princeton General, House hung back as the doctors whisked Chase into the building. He had done his bit, he told himself. Leaning against the brick wall, House withdrew the orange pill bottle from his pocket and took three Vicodin. He didn't question himself over the dosage. He knew he was an addict, and he took what he needed.

Dipping his hand back into his pocket, he returned the pills and extracted his cell. Pressing the speed dial, he called Wilson's direct line.

"I'm with a patient, House," Wilson immediately responded.

"If that really bothered you, you wouldn't have picked up the phone. I need you to come get me from Princeton General," House stated, cutting straight to the chase, as it were.

"Princeton General? You're not upstairs in your office…?" questioned Wilson, clearly confused.

"Evidently not. Just get here." House snapped his cell shut, knowing that Wilson would be here. Heading up to the ER, House went to the reception desk and filled in the admissions papers as best as he could, but did not ask for details of Chase's condition. He didn't know whether it was through anger, disdain, or fear. He tried to tell himself he was indifferent, but deep inside he knew that wasn't the case. But it was easier to convince other people of that if you convinced yourself first. Again, House refused to question himself too deeply on the point. He never did. He made the decisions, and damn the consequences. Luckily from a medical point of view, his initial instincts were usually right, and though the patients might not appreciate his methods, they usually came out the better for them in the end. But relationships wise, House's methods proved to be very effective in cutting himself off from others. That was just who he was, he assured himself, and he managed to convince most of those around him, too. He wouldn't consider the possibility that his manners acted as a defence mechanism; as long as his sarcastic barrier was firmly in place, as long as he was the one doing the hurting, then no one could hurt him. Sure.

House paused for a moment before leaving his own number as a contact for Chase. But who else did Chase really have? Sliding the clipboard back over to the receptionist, House turned around without a word, ignoring her puzzled glance. But this was an ER. The receptionist was used to much worse. As long as the papers were filed without fuss, that was all that really mattered to her.

As House headed towards the exit, he found himself, completely accidentally, staring straight into the trauma room where a team of doctors moved swiftly but efficiently, attaching tubes and monitors to the blonde form on the bed. House briefly paused, noting with professional interest the way in which the doctors worked. Satisfied, he turned away from the sight and continued on his way toward the doors without once looking at the face of the patient on the bed.

* * *

Wilson drew up outside Princeton General, his eyes roving the parking lot for House. Wilson had learnt long ago that it was easier just to obey House's demands and ask questions later. At least 50 per cent of the time this proved to be the wisest course of action. As for the other 50 per cent, well, Wilson was tolerant. You had to be to put up with House. Spotting his friend leaning heavily against his cane on the pavement, Wilson drew alongside. House wordlessly opened the door and manoeuvred himself into the passenger seat.

Wilson was silent for a moment, waiting for an explanation, but when none was forth coming, he realised that this was going to take some probing.

"So… care to tell me what you're doing escaping from one hospital in the middle of the day just to go to another, where you don't even have the encumbrance of employment?" he asked, keeping his tone light.

"What can I say? I just can't get enough of the places. Thought I'd come and spread my medical wisdom around. It's not fair for PPTH to monopolise my genius." House responded. Wilson drummed his fingers against the steering wheel in a frustrated manner.

"And now are you going to tell me the real reason, seeing as you dragged me away from a patient in the middle of my shift?" he insisted, trying to prevent the annoyance from seeping into his voice, knowing it would only fuel House.

"Chase," the answer finally came. Wilson raised his eyebrows. "The doctor or the verb?" He prompted, wondering if House was ever going to explain.

"The verb. I've been playing kiss chase with all the cute nurses. I'm working my way around Princeton." House responded, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Wilson had time only to sigh exasperatedly before House continued. "He overdosed on Elavil. Suicide attempt." Wilson could only blink in amazement. After beating about the bush for so long, House was incredibly concise when he finally got to the point, and it came to Wilson as a complete bolt out of the blue. Finally gathering his wits about him, he began to ask, "How did you…?" He wasn't quite sure how to finish the question. Why did House know?

"He didn't turn up to work. I had a hunch." House answered the unasked question.

"Do you frequently get hunches that people are trying to end their lives just because they're late to work?" He asked in amazement. A part of him realised that the situation was really a little sombre for such comments, but he was still reeling from the shock of what House had told him.

"Chase is never late to work," House answered simply, as if this explained everything. "I don't want anyone to find out what happened yet. Let's see how this plays out," he continued. Wilson peeled his eyes away from the road to stare at House for a moment.

"Come on House. You can't be serious. You're obliged to tell his employer what happened," he said.

"I think you'll find I'm his primary employer. For now, he's on sick leave with flu, got it?" House said forcefully. Wilson knew it was futile to argue with House over the matter, but he couldn't understand it.

"Why are you trying to hide this?" Silence followed. Wilson glanced at House, but found his face expressionless, and he made no move to answer the question.

The question had made House think, and he wasn't willing to pursue the chain of thought. Because he didn't know why he was doing this. It amounted to protecting Chase, and his job. Chase had betrayed him, had nearly got him fired to save his own skin, yet House was protecting Chase. And he didn't really want to look into the reasons why. He hadn't even made the decision consciously, the words had just slipped out of his mouth, and yet he realised that it was true. He didn't want anyone to know. He wanted Chase to have his privacy, at least until (he suppressed the thought "if") Chase woke up, and could start to make his own decisions.

Yet Wilson's question had set his mind racing. He wouldn't allow himself to believe that he in any way cared about Chase, suppressing the tug of heartstrings that tried to convince him otherwise. But at the very least, he owed Chase something, something he would never admit out loud, but couldn't deny to himself. Because he couldn't stifle entirely the feeling of guilt that was ever so slightly beginning to nag at him. At least, he thought that was what it was. He felt this way so rarely that it was a little hard to identify.

But what he had done rang some bells personally. House was used to ignoring the wishes of patients in order to save their lives. But generally that was because patients were stupid, ignorant, and frightened, and allowed their view of House to affect their judgement. But Chase had looked him in the eye, and told him that he wanted to die. And House had ignored him.

House pushed the thoughts out of his mind as Wilson parked his car in his spot at PPTH. The car came to a halt and Wilson glanced at House as he removed the key from the ignition and reached for the door handle. For the first time in the journey, House turned to Wilson and made eye contact, making Wilson pause.

"Just… keep it to yourself for the moment, would you James?" House requested. The use of his proper first name struck Wilson and he realised that House was serious. Whatever his reasons were, Wilson decided that for the moment he would trust House's judgement. Giving a slight nod of affirmation, he pushed the car door open, and waited for House to get out. Then the pair headed into the hospital in silence.

* * *

House stomped into his office to find Foreman at the coffee maker, but no one else around. Foreman raised his eyebrows at the late appearance of his boss, but decided to refrain from commenting. He doubted that he would come out on top of an exchange with House at this time in the morning.

"Cameron's running bloods," he remarked, feeling the need to say something to House, who seemed to have no intention of enquiring after the patient himself.

"Goodie." House remarked, looking at the board, his own scrawl now accompanied by Cameron's neat print. Without uttering another word, he opened the door to his office and switched on his TV as he limped over to his chair. Foreman rolled his eyes as he sipped at his coffee and moved to sit down at the conference table. There was little point in questioning House's odd behaviour at this point. He was more curious at this point as to the whereabouts of the third duckling. House was always odd, but Chase was never away. Realising that he was unlikely to get an answer out of House until he was ready to answer, and he clearly wasn't yet, Foreman shook out the paper on the table and began reading the headlines to pass the time until Cameron returned.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Thank you so much for all the reviews, I really appreciate them. Sorry about the delay between chapters, have been incredibly busy, but will start trying to get them out a bit quicker!

At 5.30 that afternoon, Wilson appeared at the door of House's office. House looked up, eyebrows raised, as if questioning Wilson's right to be in his office. Wilson ignored the gesture and got straight to the point.

"So. Are you going to go check on him?" he asked. House puckered his brow in confusion.

"Him? Last I checked, my patient was a 37 year old female. Well, not that I've actually checked in person. But I'm pretty sure that if a sex change had occurred in the last few hours, it would be on the chart," he answered. Again, Wilson ignored him.

"Come on House. I don't know what happened, but I'm pretty sure Chase is going to feel he has some unfinished business with you when he wakes up," he reasoned. House didn't respond, simply looking at Wilson petulantly. But nevertheless, he reached out to grab his jacket from the back of his chair and stood. Wilson took this as acceptance from House, and hid his smile of triumph.

"You're driving," House informed Wilson. "I'm pretty sure I'm going to need alcohol after this," he mumbled under his breath.

* * *

Wilson slumped into a chair in reception whilst House reluctantly made his way over to the desk to enquire as to Chase's whereabouts. Without Wilson's prompt, he was fairly certain he wouldn't be here. In fact, he could think of few places that he would less like to be at this moment in time. He didn't want to deal with the aftermath of his actions. It wasn't something he was accustomed to. Generally, he saved the life of his patients and then left them to go back to their boring little lives. This time, even he realised that that wasn't really an option.

The receptionist informed House that Chase was in the ICU, and gave him directions to the room on the basis that he was Chase's primary physician. (House had gone out on a limb and stuck his name down on the form there, he wasn't sure he could guarantee access to Chase any other way. He had a feeling the young doctor wouldn't want to see him much, but knew he was going to have to eventually.)

House glanced at Wilson, who had retrieved an outdated copy of a medical journal from the table, and seemed to have settled in for a long wait. He briefly considered walking straight past Wilson and out of the door, but he realised that this was a meeting he was going to have to have sooner or later, and he hoped that Chase might be too doped up for a full confrontation at that moment.

House took an inordinately long amount of time to reach the ICU, and had to force himself to open the doors when he eventually made it there, pausing to down a Vicodin before he entered.

Chase lay on the bed, apparently unconscious, but sweaty and restless. Unsurprising, House considered, seeing as he currently had tubes shoved in about every orifice. An NG tube to administer charcoal to absorb the drug, intubation to maintain his airway, haemodialysis to relieve his kidneys, a urinary catheter, IVs. House picked up Chase's chart and studied it for a moment. Initial monitoring seemed to be showing the treatment was working to plan, with no further seizures since the diazepam was administered and steadily increasing blood pressure and decreasing heart rate.

Replacing the chart, House leaned on the bed rail as he used his cane to hook a chair over to the bedside from against the wall and sat down heavily. Mostly, he just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible, preferably before Chase had any chance of regaining consciousness, but he knew that Wilson would be less than impressed if he returned any sooner than half an hour from then. With no ducklings to harass, House figured he might as well sit in the room for the time, keeping as quiet as possible to avoid waking Chase. More for his own benefit than for the patient's.

Withdrawing his Gameboy from his pocket, House became so absorbed in the game that when his avatar finally popped his clogs, drawing a loud expletive from House, 37 minutes had passed. House thought with relief that he had done his bit for now, but as he returned the Gameboy to his pocket, the heart rate monitor began to increase. It appeared that Chase had chosen this precise moment to wake up. House cursed himself for swearing out loud and glanced towards the door, considering an escape attempt, but turning back towards the bed, he was struck without warning by a wave of that feeling that had been nagging away at him all day, and instead he moved closer to the bed.

House remained silent as the eyelids fluttered open, finally settling at half mast, and two eyes met his, too masked for House to be able to make out an expression. Wordlessly, House pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and forced Chase's eyelids further open. Chase responded by trying to weakly pull his head out of House's grasp, but he was unsuccessful. House noted with satisfaction that the pupils were equal and reactive. Of course, Chase's doctors would check again later, but House didn't trust doctors.

Chase's mind felt foggy and he couldn't decide whether or not this was a reality or a dream. He was having trouble thinking beyond his immediate sensations. Firstly, there was the light in his eyes. Ouch. His head hurt. He tried to turn away, but that only made the pain increase, and he promptly gave up. Attempting to gasp at the pain, Chase became aware of another sensation. There was something in his throat. Immediately, his gag reflex kicked in.

"They had to intubate you," stated a voice. He knew the voice, he could feel that it was associated with a place in his mind, so he obviously knew the person well, but he couldn't quite connect that to anything solid, like a name, and his vision was too blurry to get a proper view of the figure. The attempt to work it out at least took his mind off the foreign object in his throat for a moment, quelling his gag reflex.

"Go back to sleep. You'll feel better when you wake up," the voice promised. The advice was hardly needed as Chase felt himself begin to drift back to sleep, but not before he registered a brief flicker of anger at the voice, though he was too confused to probe further into the thought.

* * *

House stepped away from the bed with a sigh as Chase drifted back off to sleep. He wanted to stay indifferent; he didn't want to be emotionally involved. Yet he couldn't help the feelings that stirred within him. He didn't want Chase to be here, in pain. He wanted to help. House tried to deny the feelings as he walked slowly out of the room, his limp a little more pronounced than usual, but he couldn't quite make them go away. He knew he would be back tomorrow.

A/N: I didn't mean to get quite so focused on House. I often think he's more interesting when you don't get to see everything he's thinking. But this just seemed to be the way it happened… hope it doesn't make him too unrealistic.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: I know I have slightly fiddled with the time scales here, and everything is moving along rather fast in terms of Chase's recovery, but I call it artistic licence. Thanks for all the review so far!

Chase forced past the confused muddle of blackness in his head until he found himself conscious. Once again, he found himself blinded by a focused beam of light directed straight into his eyes. Pulling his head away, with more force than he had previously been able to, Chase felt the light recede. He blinked furiously to regain his vision, until finally it slipped into some semblance of reality, and he was able to take in his surroundings. Turning his head to the side, Chase realised he was lying in a bed with metal railings and well used, off-whitish sheets. The bed was located within a cubicle enclosed by a white curtain. Turning his head to his other side, his gaze was drawn first to a metal IV pole with a number of bags of fluid hanging from it and then to a person, an unfamiliar youth in a white coat.

Something clicked in his mind as Chase felt clarity return. With it came the realisation that he was in a hospital, and the memories of why. Nausea rose within him and Chase made a weak attempt to rise from the bed as he felt the bile burning the back of his throat. The young doctor by his bedside moved too slowly and Chase vomited onto the sheets, though not much came up. The doctor by the bed shuffled around and grabbed an emesis basin, ramming it against Chase's chin, but the damage was done, and so was Chase. He flopped back into his pillows, engulfed by bitterness and anger. Life had never seemed worse. And that was saying something, coming from Chase.

"The nausea should pass soon enough," stated the young doctor in an annoyingly nasal voice, whom Chase had already labelled as inexperienced and inept. "Your bloods show that most of the chemical is out of your system. This is just the aftermath." If the idiot had read the chart, Chase thought, he would also know that he was speaking to a doctor and that it was therefore completely pointless to be telling him this.

"What hospital is this, and what ward am I in?" He forced out. His throat was dry and felt burnt from the acidity of the bile.

"This is the psychiatric wing of Princeton General," the youth replied. Chase withheld the urge to sigh at the increasingly obvious stupidity of this doctor. He had all the subtlety and intelligence of a work experience kid, except someone seemed to have granted this one a stethoscope. Blinking, he remained silent as he considered the best course of action. Mostly, he wanted to get out of this hospital. He briefly wondered why he was at Princeton General, and not at PPTH. But in the mean time, he would settle for getting out of the psyche wing.

"Could I have a glass of water, please?" He asked. The young doctor blushed slightly as he reached for a plastic cup and poured some water, passing it into Chase's shaky hand. Chase sensed that the doctor was very new to his speciality, (Chase rather assumed that he was a psychiatrist) and had only just been let off his supervisor's leash. Chase had a rather low opinion of psychiatrists in general, and had seen enough of them to be able to suss them out pretty quick on the whole.

With his voice a little stronger, Chase got to work quickly. "What happened?" he asked. "All I remember is having the most god awful headache."

The young doctor frowned slightly. A headache wasn't exactly an early onset, or the most severe, symptom of an Elavil overdose.

"You took some pills. The ambulance brought you in and we pumped the drugs out of your system. Do you remember why you took the pills?" the doctor questioned. Chase resisted the urge to laugh at the guy's tactics. Life experience had taught him more than a psych rotation had ever done, but this idiot didn't even seem to have read the books properly. Asking a suicide patient straight out why they did it, the minute after they woke up? Either he was hoping to catch Chase at a weak moment, without his defences, or he really didn't have a clue. Chase was opting for the second.

"I had a headache. I took some aspirin, but it just wouldn't go away. I guess I may have taken a few too many…" Chase trailed off and watched the doctor's brow furrow.

"You took Elavil. An antidepressant. That's what you overdosed on," the doctor said in a questioning voice. Chase had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. He felt like shit. He had a tube stuck up his dick. And yet he was still managing to outwit a supposedly fully trained psychiatrist. It wasn't supposed to be this easy.

"Shit," Chase responded. "I took what? Crikey, I could have killed myself!" Chase had to try very hard to suppress the melodramatic tone that his voice seemed to assume. The doctor's brow seemed to wrinkle further.

"You didn't realise what the pills were?" he asked.

"No! I must have misread the bottle!" Chase exclaimed. "Am I going to be Ok? Did I do any damage?" He asked, trying to inject some sense that he actually cared into his voice.

"You… you should be fine. The pills are almost out of your system." Already the doctor's voice was tinged with disappointment. Chase suspected that he had just cheated the guy out of his chance to prove himself to his supervisors. He was probably the guinea pig. A cut and dry case for the trainee to play with.

"Thank god. Crikey, when I think what could have happened!" Chase added for effect. "When can I get out of here?" He asked, hoping he wasn't going to arouse the doctor's suspicions with his eagerness.

Nope, Chase thought, as the doctor scribbled something on his chart before returning his pen to his pocket, clearly dissatisfied at Chase's lack of emotional breakdown.

"I'll have you transferred to a private room this afternoon," the doctor stated, slotting the chart over the side rail rather than bothering to put it at the end. He turned and walked from the cubicle, pulling the curtain shut behind him.

Chase reached forwards for the chart and leafed through to the back page where the doctor (Dr. Wimsly, he now learnt) had made the notation. "Psychologically sound", read the juvenile scrawl, accompanied by the note, "FICR". Chase frowned, searching for the meaning of the notation. It certainly wasn't a medical term he recognised. Pulling forth his memories, Chase suddenly remembered the abbreviation from his days as a med student. "Fucking idiot can't read." Chase merely raised his eyebrows slightly at the predictable simplicity of the young doctor before returning the chart to the side of the bed and scrunching back down into the bed, exhausted after his Oscar winning performance.

* * *

At five o'clock in the evening, there was a knock on House's door. He stared more intently at the television set, hoping to put on a credible show of not having noticed. But sadly, glass walls weren't really conducive to hiding. Wilson entered. If anything, House should have been surprised that he bothered to knock at all.

"Come on. Even as his doctor you'll be pushing visiting hours if you arrive after 6," Wilson stated. House dragged his eyes away from the TV set and regarded his friend, picking up the ball on his desk and tossing it high above his head.

"What makes you think I'm visiting?" He asked, as he caught the ball on its descent and threw it at Wilson. Wilson caught the ball, but did not return it.

"Come on," Wilson simply said. House hated that his actions could be predicted, and would have refused if he didn't know somewhere within him that he had to visit. And equally, although half of him wanted nothing more than to never see his employee again, the other half was intrigued. He was curious. There was a puzzle that had yet to be solved. He wanted to see the workings of the mind. Again, House refused to let himself believe that he had any other motives for wanting to see Chase. Lifting his jacket of his chair with a mock sigh of resignation, House muttered, "party pooper", as he hobbled out after Wilson and hit the light switch.

* * *

House paused outside the room he had been directed too, again filled with a deep sense of dread. He wondered how Chase had managed to escape the psych wing so quickly, but the curiosity was dwarfed by the guilt and anger that he felt towards Chase. He couldn't quite work out why those feelings were so overwhelming him again. Usually he was pretty good at putting a lid on such emotions. But somehow he knew he felt at the very least a responsibility towards Chase.

Finally, he forced the door open and entered Chase's private room. Without the ventilator in and with some of the other tubes now removed, Chase was a little more free, and was now curled up on the bed and facing away from the door. He appeared to be asleep; House was relieved. Pushing the door too as quietly as possible, House made his way over to the chair. He was pulling his Gameboy out of his pocket when the shuffling of sheets caught his attention.

House glanced up to see a pair of eyes peeping out at him over the top of the sheet. It was amazing, House thought, how the Australian managed to portray such a wounded look of anger with nothing more than his eyes showing.

"What are you doing here, House?" Chase asked, rasping. House shifted somewhat awkwardly in the chair.

"What, no tearful hugs for the valiant saviour?" he mocked. He hadn't exactly planned it that way, but sarcasm was his standard method of defence.

"Just go." Chase responded, turning his head away so that not even his eyes were visible to House. Fine, thought House, it was easier that way anyway.

"You realise that you're going to have to see me again whatever. Not only am I your doctor, I'm also your boss." House pointed out.

The sheets twitched.

"Since when are you my doctor?" Chase injected a sneer into the question even with his dry throat.

"Since yesterday, actually, when you decided that the answer to life lay at the bottom of a bottle of pills, contrary to the popular belief that it is, in fact, 42." If House had been hoping for a chuckle, he was sorely disappointed.

"I'm switching doctors. And I'm resigning my post." Chase answered. House lifted his eyebrows in surprise. Of course, he should have expected that. He should have realised that Chase wouldn't plan on sticking around after this, but after what Chase had done not so very long ago to ensure that he kept his job, House just hadn't really seen Chase walking out on it in quite this manner. Of course, if things had gone to Chase's plans, it would all have been irrelevant anyway. But after 8 months of fellowship, the longest anyone had ever made with House, he just hadn't thought Chase would walk away from it like this.

"What makes you think you haven't already been fired?" he countered.

"Have I?" Chase questioned, with nothing more than slight interest registering in his voice.

House paused. He wouldn't lie. Now he had unintentionally given Chase one up.

"No. You have the flu." House answered. As far as everyone but Wilson was concerned, this was exactly what Chase had. Cameron had even suggested that she take some grapes over to Chase that evening.

"Told you so," Chase answered back. House was unable to restrain a slight smirk at the fact that his youngest fellow retained something of a sense of humour, even in this most awkward of situations.

"And I'm not letting you out of your contract. So you have no choice but to stay." House added. The tiny voice of sensitivity that was left within him whispered that it perhaps wasn't a good idea to force this notion upon Chase at the moment, given his recent exploits. He might resort back to a more permanent method of escape. But he had been ignoring that voice for too long for it to have much influence over his actions now.

"You can't make me stay," Chase shot back vehemently, and then promptly broke into a bout of coughing. House watched, torn, as Chase's body was racked with coughs, but as a tear began to squeeze out of the corner of his tightly clenched shut eyes, House moved to the bedside. Pouring a glass of water, he brought his hand gently round the back of Chase's neck, bringing his head forwards until he could drink the water without choking. Chase drank the water gratefully until he had brought the coughing back under control, and then pulled away from House's grip. House removed his hand with something that felt like a twinge of regret, and stepped a little further away from the bed, but did not return to his seat. Staring for a moment at the young blonde face lying in the bed before him, House was for a moment convinced that the tear that now trickled down Chase's cheek had nothing to do with his physical condition.

"Go away House." Chase's voice was so steely that House was shaken from his thoughts of a moment earlier. Matching Chase's tone, House responded, "I'm coming back tomorrow," before turning and walking out of the door.

House was almost glad that Chase had been so keen to see the back of him. It was almost as though he had set House a challenge; now House had an excuse to continue visiting Chase. As long as Chase didn't want him there, he felt it was acceptable for him to be there.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: I'm glad I got the last chapter over with, it is probably my least favourite of the story. But I wrote it so long ago that I didn't have the enthusiasm to fiddle. Thank you for all the reviews so far!

Chase lay motionless on the bed, curled onto his side, eyes open but unmoving. He was exhausted, but he couldn't sleep. His mind was filled with thoughts that rushed around nonsensically through the caverns of his mind. Why had House come? Chase vaguely recollected that he might have seen him the day before as well, but his memories from then were hazy to say the least. But the puzzle was keeping him awake.

Chase could almost understand House's need to save him, to call the ambulance when he had been dying on his couch. House solved puzzles and saved lives. He dealt with the physical need. He knew that it did not revolve around emotional attachment; it was simply his own desire to solve mysteries and preserve life. It didn't mean anything.

But what Chase couldn't understand was why House had come back, why he wouldn't just let Chase go. If he had ever needed an excuse, now was the time. House had, of course, had opportunities to get rid of Chase before. Chase believed that the only reason that he hadn't fired him when Vogler left was so that he could punish him slowly and personally instead, then maybe fire him just before his fellowship was officially completed, just to deprive him of the satisfaction of finality.

But this wasn't the same as allowing Chase to stay. This required another sort of effort.

In all the time that Chase had worked under House, he had never seen him get involved in a patient's aftercare, except on the rare occasions that there was something in it for him. So what did he have to offer House, Chase wondered?

Whatever it was, Chase doubted that House's motives were innocent, or in his own best interests. He didn't know whether House meant to torture him further in some way in which Chase couldn't yet understand, or whether there was another even more unfathomable motive behind his interest. What he did know was that he didn't intend to stick around to become House's plaything, a slightly more animate version of the characters he spent all day playing with on his Gameboy, a crying, talking, sleeping, walking, living doll. Chase closed his eyes as a nurse entered the room and began adjusting his drip; if he was caught staring blankly at the wall all day, he would be back in the psych wing before he could blink.

* * *

House awoke unusually early, with the familiar pain gnawing at his leg. Cursing under his breath at the irritating wake up call, House groped blindly about his bedside table for his Vicodin. After several clumsy and fruitless efforts, he finally recalled that he had left the pills by the bathroom sink. Hitting the light switch with a little more force than was necessary, he located his cane and hauled himself stiffly to his feet. There would be no more sleep that night.

Entering the bathroom, he flicked the light switch and winced at the unnaturally harsh light, and the pale reflection that his pain creased face cast in the mirror. Rubbing his gritty, bloodshot eyes, he made his way to the kitchen and stuck the coffee maker on, yawning profusely, and then shuffled awkwardly over to the piano stool.

Resting his fingers over the smooth keys, he struck a broken blues chord and began to work a tune around it. He frowned as a rogue finger struck a discordant note, then moments later, another. Pulling his hands away from the keys, as if for fear of damaging the instrument, he sighed and headed back towards the kitchen, distractedly clutching his thigh. House reached for the freshly brewed coffee, and gulped generously, then spluttered as the still boiling liquid scorched first his tongue and then his throat. Slamming the cup down on the side board as if it had intentionally affronted him, House glared at the mug, then turned resolutely and hobbled back to his bedroom. Pulling on an unwashed pair of pants from several days earlier and a shirt that had been ironed at least once in the past month, he reached for his jacket and retrieved his car keys. He wasn't quite sure where he was heading, at least not consciously, but his day in his apartment didn't seem to be getting off to the best of starts.

* * *

Chase sat on the edge of the bed in a plain white t shirt and a pair of navy scrubs pants that the hospital had procured for him, holding in his hand a clipboard with a set of papers attached.

"You realise that you are signing out against medical advice, and that by signing these papers, you relieve this hospital and its staff of any legal obligations concerning your health," said the boringly middle aged doctor before him.

Chase smiled humourlessly back at the doctor. "I'm a doctor," he assured. "I can take care of myself." Handing the clipboard over to the doctor, he levered himself up from the bed, and tried to hide the inevitable dizziness that came from the combination of still lowered blood pressure and lack of proper food. Chase bent over his wrist to remove the patient ID band, but looked up when the door swung open abruptly.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Asked an irate House, looking, if possible, even more dishevelled than usual.

The boringly middle aged doctor assumed an expression of slight alarm, the only emotion Chase had seen him display during his day under his care.

Chase looked House in the eye and said simply, "home." As far as he was concerned, House had no business to be there, and therefore no grounds to argue with Chase.

House glowered at Chase before turning his attention to the other doctor. "You haven't signed him out, have you, you moron?" He demanded.

"I – I did advise Mr – D – Dr Chase to remain under our care, but he's s – signing out AMA." Chase noted the stutter with vague interest. It must only appear when nervous. He must have been bullied like hell for that in his school days. Explained a lot, Chase reflected.

It didn't seem to cross the middle aged doctor's mind to ask who this scruffy looking cripple that had just charged into the room was. Somehow House just had an air of authority about him.

"If you'll excuse me," he half squeaked, as House banged his cane angrily on the floor. House scrutinised him for a split second as if trying to decide whether it was worth trying to make his life a misery, but then seemed to decide he had a worthier cause. Chase couldn't decide whether he felt more exasperated or confused by House's inexplicable appearance and his reaction to Chase's actions.

"What do you want House?" he asked, unsure as to whether he was merely asking the question because it seemed obvious, or whether he actually cared about the answer.

"Bored of your new playmates already?" House asked, his tone sarcastically curious as he leaned laconically against the doorway. Chase quickly decided that he was very much uninterested in anything that House could have to say. He reached to push the door open.

"Ouch!" he exclaimed, as House's cane shot up to bar his way, catching him sharply on the wrist. "Let me go," he said quietly but deliberately. He wasn't in the mood to play mind games with House. In fact, he absolutely intended never to see House again.

"Uh uh, no escape from the zoo today," House said, his tone playfully mocking. Chase felt his breathing and heart rate increase, the sensations heightened by his still erratic heart beat.

"You're not my doctor, House. You can't make me do anything. Do you plan on standing there until security comes to remove you?" Chase would have been shouting had his voice not still been suffering owing to the tube that had been shoved down his throat until the day before, coupled with the repetitive throwing up and dehydration.

"We discussed this, or has oxygen deprivation given you memory loss? I am your doctor, and I am your boss, and therefore I do have control over you."

Thump, thump, thump. Chase could feel his heart beating faster and faster as his body reacted involuntarily to House's words. He was becoming increasingly angry and desperate. He felt like all the control was been stripped away from him. First House had deprived him of his right to die; now he was taking it one step further, and depriving him of his right to live the way he wanted as well.

Chase felt his head grow light as his body strove to pump blood to all his organs, fighting against the decreased blood pressure. He wasn't sure whether he moved deliberately towards the door frame, or whether he fell against it, but he was suddenly aware that it was taking a large proportion of his weight.

House seized his moment. Seeing Chase struggle to remain upright, he grabbed the wheelchair that was waiting to deliver Chase firmly over the threshold of Princeton Hospital (abandoned by the orderly at the sight of a manic looking House striding straight towards him down the corridor), and placed a hand on Chase's shoulder, forcing him into the chair. As Chase struggled to hold on to consciousness, House gripped the handles of the chair and manoeuvred himself and Chase out of the hospital room and down the corridor.

* * *

Chase sat in the passenger seat of House's car in silence. When House had appeared in the hospital room, Chase had been angry. What right did House have to interfere with his life? But now, Chase simply felt resigned. He had spent his life being controlled by other people. This was no different. At least when he let someone else take charge, let their wishes dictate his, at least then he had some kind of direction. Left to his own devices, his life was simply meaningless. He was meaningless. So he allowed House to bundle him into his car, and didn't question where he was taking him. He didn't respond to House's sarky comments. In fact, he hadn't made eye contact with him at all since House had forced him into the wheelchair. He would do what House directed him to until such point as he could muster any motivation to allow for anything else, one way or the other. Because at this moment in time he didn't think he was capable of getting up in the morning.

Chase didn't quite know where he had been planning on going or what he had been planning on doing when he woke up that morning. He was only aware that he didn't want to stay in the hospital anymore. He didn't even want to be in Princeton any more.

* * *

A/N: Ok, so I quoted Cliff Richard. Forgive me. 


	7. Chapter 7

As House pulled into his parking space at his block, he glanced over at his passenger. He looked lifeless. He hadn't resisted the movements of the car as it swung around the corners, allowing his head to bang against the window; hadn't reacted at all as House had floored the accelerator, hitting nearly 100km/hr on the 50 km stretch. It was disturbing, even from the generally blasé Chase. At least during the other encounters House had had with Chase since he awoke, the younger man had shown some sort of emotion. Now he seemed to have completely stopped caring, and House was more than a little worried about what he might do now that he was away from the supervision of the hospital.

Ignoring the voice within him that tried to tell him it wasn't his duty to care, that he should simply abandon Chase and let him do what he wanted, whatever that might mean, House had instead driven back to his apartment.

Getting out of the car, he waited for Chase. But Chase made no move to get out of the vehicle himself. House couldn't decide whether Chase was cutting himself off from the outside world, and therefore honestly hadn't noticed the car stop, or whether he was trying to exert control over the few actions that had been left to him.

House went to the other side of the car, and opened Chase's door.

"Chase," he stated loudly. Chase turned and looked up at him, a good sign, but his face was entirely blank of expression, and he made no response to House. House gritted his teeth. This was going to be harder than he'd thought. If he was honest with himself, he hadn't really thought. He had just done what his instincts had told him to, something that he hadn't allowed himself to do (at least not when it came to his own life) since Stacey had left.

"Undo your seat strap," he ordered. Chase blinked and turned away from House, then slowly reached for the buckle and unclipped the belt.

"Get out," House demanded. Again, Chase followed the instruction. House had the strong impression that if he were to say, "Lick my shoes", Chase would obey without question. Resisting the urge to try, House shut the car door behind Chase and gave him a (reasonably) gentle shove in the direction of the building. "Follow," he stated over his shoulder as he headed for the elevator to his building.

* * *

House unlocked his apartment and steered Chase straight towards the bedroom, forcing Chase down onto the bed.

"Don't worry. I'm not intending to have my wicked way with you," he said to Chase, but Chase simply continued to stare down at his hands as he twisted them to and fro in his lap.

House paused to think. He really hadn't thought this through logically. He was only aware that if he left Chase to his own devices, he wouldn't be sticking around, not in Princeton, and possibly not in the world.

After a moment thinking, House set about on a plan of action. Leaving Chase sitting on the side of the bed staring at his hands, he entered the bathroom and locked his medical cabinet, containing all his pills and razors. Withdrawing his penknife from his pocket, he removed the bolt from the bathroom door. Then he moved onto the bedroom, locating all the sharp objects (he had a surprising number, considering his lack of attention to his personal grooming), and adding them to the stash in the medical cupboard. He was glad his bedroom window was double glazed and screwed shut; one less thing to worry about. He removed the sheets and covers from the bed, leaving a bare mattress and a duvet, and then glancing about his room, he locked his closet, containing all his belts and ties.

Judging that his room was now as wombat proof as it was ever going to be, House turned towards Chase, who was still standing having been forced to get up whilst House stripped the bed.

"I'm protecting my stuff, not you," he informed Chase. Chase merely looked at House with the same blank expression he had been wearing since they left the hospital. "Go to sleep," he ordered Chase. Chase lay down on the bed, still on top of the now coverless duvet, and stared straight up at the ceiling, but didn't close his eyes. Deciding that it was easiest to leave him as he was for the moment, House exited his bedroom and locked the door, then picked up his phone and dialled Wilson.

"Dr Wilson", answered the all too perky voice of his colleague, especially given the fact that it was still only nine thirty in the morning, and he and Wilson had spent a fair amount of time out drinking the night before.

"I need a prescription for Remeron. And I need you to go buy me a couch-bed." House said. There was a moment of silence.

"Morning to you too, House. Finally decided that you're going to buy me a proper bed to sleep on when I'm at your place? I'm touched. But unless you're inviting me to move in with you, it's traditional to do your own furniture shopping. And I thought Vicodin was your drug of choice." Wilson answered back. House rolled his eyes, as if he expected Wilson to psychically predict his desires.

"Not for you dummy, or me. For Chase", House clarified. "For a boy wonder, you sometimes don't appear to have much between the ears."

"Before, I was just mildly confused. Now you have me seriously worried. Chase is staying at your place? Where is the real House and what have you done with him?" Wilson asked dramatically.

"House has caught the flu. It's going round. Go tell Cuddy, then get your ass down to the furniture shop. Make sure they can deliver today. And buy something nice. It'll benefit you in the future." House slammed the phone down, knowing Wilson would do as he said.

* * *

At three in the afternoon, House found himself directing a number of incompetent delivery men as to the position of the dark teak couch-bed. As they finally managed to settle it, House waited for them leave, yet they hovered expectantly.

House raised his eyebrows at the butch, over muscled pair. "What, you want blow jobs or something?" He questioned. Flushing indignantly, they fairly scurried out of the door. Wilson flopped down on the new couch next to House.

"So what have you done with Chase?" He asked. House pointed his thumb in the direction of the bedroom, leaning back into the couch and pinching the bridge of his nose, warding off a headache. Popping a Vicodin, he remembered the prescription for Remeron that he had asked Wilson to bring.

"Have you got the Remeron? Asides from helping with the depression it should make him feel less nauseas and help him to eat and sleep." Wilson produced the bottle from his bag and handed it to House.

"Is he safe to be left alone?" Wilson asked. Given the impression that he had gotten from House about Chase's condition, that was pretty much the last thing he needed right now.

"I've kiddie proofed my room," House answered as he got up and went into the kitchen, reaching for a can of soup and a pan, "And he isn't feeling all that sociable right now," he finished, heating up the soup.

"Shall I go wake him?" Wilson asked. He secretly wondered whether Chase's condition might be partly to do with House's lack of bedside manner.

"Sure," House responded. He guessed Wilson's suspicions, so it was best if he let him see for himself. "Get him to come to the table."

Wilson reached for the door handle, but turning it, realised that it was locked. Groping for the key on the shelf beside the door, he unlocked it and entered the room.

Chase was lying flat on the bed with his arms wrapped around his stomach, and his eyes snapped open immediately as Wilson entered the room, making him doubt whether Chase had ever been asleep.

"Chase?" He tried tentatively. Chase turned to look at him, but made no other movement. "Do you want to come out to the kitchen? There's some soup ready."

Chase stared at him blankly for a moment, as if processing the information, then shook his head minutely and returned his gaze to the ceiling.

"You have to eat Chase, or you're going back to the hospital." Wilson said in his sternest voice (which wasn't all that stern).

Chase seemed to realise that Wilson required some kind of verbal communication. "I never asked to be here." He supplied.

Wilson sighed. He was starting to see that if left to his own devices, Chase would probably simply drift away, first mentally, and then physically.

House appeared in the door way, and strode over to Chase's bed. "Get up," he said forcefully. Chase blinked, and for a moment Wilson thought that he might cry, but then he rolled over and sat up, pausing for a moment on the edge of the bed. Wilson looked as his friend with admiration.

"He only responds to direct orders," House informed him. Wilson glanced at "he" to see if he would dispute the way House talked as if he wasn't in the room, but Chase showed no reaction, other than standing up. Seeing the way Chase swayed to the side, clearly unsteady, Wilson hurriedly moved forwards and placed a supportive arm under Chase's elbow, but after most of the imbalance had passed, Chase threw off the arm and staggered off towards the kitchen. Wilson glanced at House significantly, worried about both Chase's physical and mental condition.

As House began to follow Chase into the kitchen, Wilson put a restraining arm on House's. "Don't you think he'd be better off committed to the psychiatric wing of a hospital?" he asked. House simply shook his head and moved off towards the kitchen.

"That'll kill him," House replied, not turning to look at Wilson. Wilson was a little confused as to House's comment, but decided to keep quiet for now.

* * *

Chase hovered in the kitchen, seemingly unwilling to commit himself to a chair. House pushed down on his shoulder, forcing him into the chair, then placed a bowl of soup, a spoon, a glass of water and two white pills. Chase looked at him questioningly, but made no move. It was becoming a familiar pattern.

"Eat the soup, drink the water, and take the pills." House realised that there was little chance of Chase doing anything at all without being ordered. It was like dealing with a child. But fortunately, House had never had his own kids, so he had never had to be the one responsible for one. But in a strange sort of way, he had given Chase life, and had landed himself with the responsibility of making sure that Chase turned out ok.

Chase picked up the spoon and toyed with it, but even with House's order, he didn't want to eat the soup. His mind had gone blank (it was easier that way, it blocked out the other negative feelings), and Chase had just allowed House's orders to penetrate his mind and then carried out, silencing the part of his brain that questioned, "Why should I do that?" But now his body was interfering. Chase felt sick just looking at the soup.

"Put spoon in bowl, transfer soup to mouth." House clarified. Chase dipped the spoon in the bowl, his hand shaking as he brought it back up, spilling most of the soup back into the bowl. House watched intently as he sipped at the liquid, his face bearing an expression of distaste. House didn't know whether to be displeased with the lack of enthusiasm that Chase was showing or pleased that he was actually managing to express an opinion over something for the first time since House had taken him away from the hospital.

A moment later, Chase gagged, and House decided he was definitely displeased.

"Bucket under the sink," he said to Wilson, who was already on his feet. Wilson dashed to the sink and retrieved the bucket, bringing it back just in time to catch the soup that Chase's body had decided to reject. Chase continued to gag over the bucket, but could bring nothing up.

House gripped his shoulder in support as Chase lurched over the bucket, bringing up nothing. Wilson sat down with a wet cloth on the other side of Chase, placing a gentle hand on his other shoulder.

"Sshh, Chase," he consoled. "Breathe through it, there nothing left to come up. You just have to control the gag reflex."

House wondered if Chase was capable of controlling anything at this moment in time, but his physical discomfort seemed to give his mind the power to think for a minute, and gradually his breathing retuned to normal and the retching stopped. Wilson leaned over and wiped Chase's mouth with the cloth, then Chase seemed to return to his senses, pushing the bucket away and laying his head on top of his arms on the table. House picked up the glass of water and forced Chase's head up.

"Sip," he demanded, bringing the glass to Chase's lips. Chase was shaking too much to resist House, so instead he swallowed weakly, hoping it wouldn't come back up in the same way in a minute.

"Take him back to bed," House ordered Wilson. Wilson stood and heaved Chase to his feet, half dragging him back to House's bed.

House grabbed his medical bag, the pills and the glass of water, and followed into the room. Wilson had pulled the covers back, so that this time Chase was lying under the duvet rather than on it. Placing the glass and the pills on the edge of the table, House reached into his medical bag and withdrew his stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff. Securing the cuff around Chase's arm, he pumped it full of air and waited for the reading.

"74 over 46," he read off. "Still too low." Lifting Chase's shirt, he pressed his stethoscope against Chase's chest and listened intently for over a minute. "Heart rate approximately 104 and irregular." He looked up at Chase worriedly, but the younger man displayed no emotion. "Take these," House ordered, holding the pills out. Chase eyed the pills warily. Funny, House considered, that he cared what the pills were, given the fact that he had been trying to use them to kill himself a few days ago.

House wondered if Chase would verbalise his obvious suspicion of the pills, but eventually he merely accepted them, and allowed House to help him control the glass of water to his mouth so that he could swallow them down.

"It's Remeron, it should help you sleep and control the nausea," House informed Chase, as he apparently wasn't going to enquire on his own behalf.

House waited tensely to see if Chase's body would accept the pills, but after a few moments, Chase's eyelids began to droop and his breathing evened out. Letting out a breath he hadn't realised he had been holding, House retrieved the glass and his medical bag and motioned Wilson out of the room, locking the door behind him.

"He should be in the hospital you know House, he's clearly not recovered enough," Wilson stated as they sat down on the new couch. "What if he goes into cardiac arrest, or starts seizing, or suffocates on vomit, or – you get the idea." Wilson finished.

"If I'd left him in the hospital, he would have only found another way to escape, or tried to off himself again," House answered coarsely. Wilson said nothing in response to his gruff tone; he knew that it meant House cared, but didn't want to show it. "The psychological affects would only have been worse in the hospital. At least here I can keep an eye on him," House said resolutely. Any indecision was gone. "I need you to get some diazepam in case of seizing, epinephrine, IV fluids, bicarbonate, and syringes", House directed, soliciting raised eyebrows from Wilson.

"You're planning on setting up a mini hospital, in your own home, using stolen hospital supplies," he asked dubiously. House assumed a patronising smile.

"Worried about getting into trouble with the big bad Cuddy?" He teased. "Don't worry about it. We're both doctors there. We have a right to those supplies for our patients."

"Except for the fact that Chase is not, nor has he ever been, admitted at PPTH," Wilson pointed out.

"If you're too chicken, get Foreman to do it. Say it's for… an epileptic kid dying of cancer with an electrolyte imbalance who wants to die in the comfort of his own home. He only has a few hours to live don't you know, hurry along!" He urged, flapping his hands at Wilson. Wilson sighed and got to his feet begrudgingly. How did House always manage to get around him? But then he thought of Chase lying in the other room. House didn't always use the most legitimate methods to get what he wanted, but Wilson honestly believed, even if at times he had doubted, that House was working for the right objectives.

* * *

A/N: I don't know if couch bed is the correct term, but I googled it and it came up with millions of results, so I went with it. It is also entirely possible that House already has a couch bed, I couldn't quite remember. So again I employ artistic licence, favourite of lazy authors throughout the world. 


	8. Chapter 8

Chase lay on the bed, once again staring up at the ceiling. This time, though, he was a little more with it. Throughout the day he seemed to have been blocking out his surroundings and his thoughts, whether subconsciously or consciously he wasn't sure. House had decided that he was going to be in control of Chase's actions, and rather than exhausting himself by resisting, Chase had simply allowed him to, and banished all thoughts of why.

But now, whether because the antidepressants were kicking in, returning the chemicals in his brain to a more normal balance, or whether because now he had been left alone for a while, his brain was beginning to kick back into action. And his mind was full of questions.

Why was House doing this?

What did it mean?

Why was Chase putting up with it?

Did he want to be here?

The last question, in particular, kept recurring to Chase. Again and again, he pushed it away from the forefront of his mind, convincing himself that he didn't care, he just wanted control back. He didn't need anyone else. He didn't want anyone else.

But at the same time, he couldn't quite help the stir of life that seemed to be rising within him, that whispered that the world wasn't such a bad place after all, that there were things left worth living for. Chase turned restlessly on his pillows, ignoring the voice.

Chase jumped as he heard the key click in the lock, and his racing heart skipped a beat, causing Chase to flinch, just as House switched on the light and entered the room with his medical bag. Chase sat up. He knew it was late, and wondered if House was planning on staying up all night.

"Rise and shine, wombat," House said cheerily, shutting the door behind him. Chase felt a twinge of resentment over being locked up, something that hadn't really registered before.

Chase scowled as House wrapped the pressure cuff around his arm and began to pump it full of air. Every medical action that House performed served as a reminder to Chase that House had denied him of his wishes. Having been dead to emotion for the entirety of the day, anger built suddenly and inexplicably within him.

"Why?" He spat at House angrily. Looking up from the reading on the blood pressure machine, House simply raised his eyebrows.

"Why… does the sun shine? Why… does the grass grow?" he supplied. Chase breathed in deeply, feeling his heart rate notch up.

"Don't mess with me House, you've done enough of that already." Chase responded, brushing House's humour aside. "Why did you do it, when you said you wouldn't?"

House eyed the Aussie, half relieved that he seemed to be back at home mentally, and half unsettled at the directness of the question.

"Everybody lies." He fell back on his favourite saying, because at least Chase couldn't argue with it. Reaching for his stethoscope, he diverted his attention from Chase's eyes and focused his attention on the medical tasks before him. "Your BP's not coming up," he informed Chase, going to lift his shirt. Chase moved away from House's reach, forcing House to look up and meet his eyes.

"Can't you ever give a direct answer?" Chase asked, almost begging. He needed explanations.

House sighed, realising that for once in his life, now would be a good time to answer for his actions, given the fact that he had Chase locked in his bedroom for the foreseeable future. But probing into his thoughts a little as the silence stretched out, House realised that he honestly couldn't give a direct answer. Either he didn't know, or he couldn't acknowledge, his reasons for saving Chase. Was he saving Chase from himself, or was he saving him for his own selfish reasons?

"I don't know why I did it," he finally answered Chase. "If I ever work it out, you'll be the second to know." Chase stared back at House with a look of bitter disdain, and broke the eye contact himself this time, yet he allowed House to pull up his shirt and listen to his heartbeat.

House kept his face blank as he measured the heart rate, despite the fact that it was beating even faster than it had been earlier.

* * *

First thing in the morning, Wilson dropped by with the various supplies that House had demanded.

"This is the last favour House. I had to shove all this stuff in my briefcase, and then it wouldn't lock." He informed House as he let himself in and found House still in bed on the new couch-bed.

House stared up at Wilson groggily, not yet fully awake.

"No, 'honey I'm home'? No 'morning House, here's your breakfast in bed'?" He croaked. Wilson merely glared back, dumping his supplies on the coffee table, and looked ready to leave, but then, softening, he asked, "How's Chase doing?"

House glanced at his watch. 7 am. That meant it had been 8 hours since he'd last checked on Chase.

"I don't know. You want to be the one to go find out if he's a morning person?" House suggested hopefully. Wilson rolled his eyes.

"I'm going to work House. Call me if you need anything," he said, turning towards the door. He paused with his hand on the handle, and peered back at House over his shoulder. "On second thoughts, don't."

House buried his head under his pillow as the door swung shut behind Wilson, then slowly dragged himself out, reaching first for his Vicodin, and then swinging onto the edge of his bed and reaching for the supplies Wilson had brought. Grabbing his cane, he got up and unlocked the door to his bedroom.

Chase, to his relief, was peacefully asleep. House opened his mouth to yell, and wake Chase up, but taking in the still pale pallor and the deep bags around the eyes of his youngest duckling, he changed his mind at the last moment.

"Chase," he said, shaking the young man's shoulder. "Time to get up." Chase rolled onto his back and opened his eyes, squinting against the morning light. As his eyes set on House, he let out a small grown and closed his eyes again, turning onto his side. House suppressed a smirk, secretly glad at the fact that Chase had actually managed such a response, though it was possibly only because it was too early for him to have his guard up. Still restrained by some sense of pity, House held back a cutting remark and instead reached silently for the blood pressure cuff. Chase still refused to meet House's eyes, and House couldn't tell whether it was from shame, indifference, anger or tiredness, but he neither did he resist House's efforts. The machine bleeped and House was relieved to find that Chase's blood pressure had increased significantly, placing him almost within normal measures. Pressing his fingers over Chase's wrist, he found that his heart was still beating too fast, and not entirely regularly, though it had improved. Now if Chase would just start getting better mentally, he would be fixed, and House could get his apartment back…

"Get up." He ordered. Chase glanced at House in a long suffering manner and moved slowly towards the edge of the bed, rubbing his eyes. Satisfied that Chase would obey the order, House stood and walked to the door, leaving it open as a signal for Chase to join him.

* * *

Ten minutes later, as House served two plates of scrambled eggs on toast, he was beginning to wonder if Chase had given up on the order. But a moment later, the younger man appeared at the doorway, hair wet, and House realised that he must have been having a shower. House was pleased that the younger man had actually made the effort of his own initiative. Casting an eye over his youngest duckling, House noted the stubble over his chin that was becoming more and more pronounced. He would allow Chase to do something about that after breakfast.

House set the plates down on the table with two mugs of coffee, wondering what Wilson would make of the five star service that he was providing Chase with, in comparison with the slave labour that House made Wilson subject to when he stayed over. "Eat", he instructed Chase as he sat down. Chase sighed and slumped slowly into the other place, but made no effort to begin eating.

The awkward silence ate away at House. It wasn't something that he was generally used to dealing with. Normally he would have broken it with a stream of acerbic wit, but every time he looked at Chase, toying dejectedly with his fork, all he could feel was a twisting feeling of guilt, mixed with pity, that churned his stomach, and left him voiceless. House couldn't remember if he'd ever felt this way, not since he was a very small child at any rate, and certainly never over another human being, at least not to the same extent.

"Are you going to eat those eggs? Or just turn them into soup?" He finally snapped, the tension that had built making his voice come out harsher than he had intended. The resulting guilt only served to further aggravate him, and his face wrinkled into a grumpy frown.

Chase froze with the fork hovering above the plate, but still he wouldn't look at House. Lowering the fork slowly, he finally dug into the eggs, nibbling timidly at the fork load. House sighed, leaning back in his chair, and fiddled with his cane for a moment, trying to disguise his awkwardness. Finally deciding that he could bare it no longer, House lifted his empty plate and shoved it roughly into the sink.

"I'm going to take a shower," he told Chase, limping towards his bedroom. "Be done by the time I get back."

* * *

Chase placed the fork down on the table, and sat entirely still, listening. He felt suffocated by House, and confused. He couldn't understand why his boss, normally so aloof and uncaring, was suddenly behaving this way. Though Chase usually followed House's instincts over medical matters, when it came to his personal life, Chase didn't trust the other man at all. Now that the initial anger, and then blankness, towards House, seemed to have blown over, Chase simply felt apprehensive and uneasy. He was sure that House had some kind of ulterior motive for keeping him here, and he increasingly felt like a test subject. Even with a patient, Chase had never known House to be so, well, caring.

Hearing the bathroom door click shut and the shower come to life, Chase let out an unconscious sigh, feeling for the first time in the few days that he could breathe. His mind clicked into action. Chase glanced at the front door. House had left it unlocked. Slipping on a pair of House's sneakers, discarded by the mat, Chase opened the door as quietly as he could, and slipped outside into the corridor. He felt like he was escaping from a prison, and the adrenaline was pumping so hard that he thought he could hear his racing heart beating. Chase tensed as he softly shut the door, expecting at any moment that the wrathful face of House would appear. But, mercifully, the only sound that could be heard from the apartment was the distant rush of water from the shower. Chase paused for a moment, a sudden moment of indecision washing over him as he questioned whether or not he should really be doing this. Chase tried to keep his head down as he shuffled to the door, trying not to hurry too fast past the doorman behind the desk as his head automatically popped up from inside the newspaper he was reading at the emerging guest. He tried hard not to think of the fact that he was dressed in a crumpled, ill fitting t-shirt and a pair of blue scrub bottoms, with 4 days of stubble and wet hair, especially given the cold winter day that awaited him.

The doorman, a ginger haired youth, looked uncertainly at the oddly attired man, but he hurried past and made for the exit, and as long as he was going not coming, what did it really matter? Chase pulled open the left of the double doors, the crisp air meeting him with a rush, and stepped into the outside world. As the door shut behind him, the doorman shuddered against the gust of wind, and returned his gaze to his paper.

* * *

A/N: having re-watched a few episodes I realise that House doesn't actually have a doorman… but he serves an artistic purpose, so I'm afraid he stays. 

P.s. Happy Christmas!


	9. Chapter 9

Wilson sat as his desk, frowning over the file in front of him, when the door burst open, to reveal a disgruntled looking House, with no jacket, just a t shirt, and a fluorescent yellow pair of sneakers.

"He's gone", House announced dramatically. Wilson digested the comment, pushing aside his doubts over House's appearance.

"Chase?" He ventured. House stared at him scathingly.

"No. Steve McQueen. So obviously I came all the way down here to see if he'd popped in for a chat with you." House said with a sarcastic smile, his voice falsely bright.

"How did he get out? I thought you had him locked in your room," Wilson asked.

"I was taking a shower. I would have had him in for company, but you know he's not really into that at the moment. Rubbish houseguest really. He should really find _some _way to pay his way." House answered.

"Are you going to indulge in intelligent, sensical, conversation at any point today?" Wilson enquired.

"Do I ever?" came the sulky response.

"Not really," Wilson conceded. "So where have you looked?" Wilson asked. House limped over to the armchair in the corner of Wilson's office and sat down heavily.

"Everywhere," House responded, sighing, finally letting Wilson catch a sliver of worry. "I.e. my apartment, his apartment, and here. Next stop is the zoo. Where else do wombats hide out?" House sounded aggravated, and indeed he was. After all the time Chase had been here, he still had not the faintest idea where he might hope to find him. Chase had no family here that he was aware of, and it wasn't like he could have escaped to Australia in the short time that he had been missing, and the only acquaintance that House was aware of outside the hospital was that dominatrix, and it wasn't like House had ever really got the low down on that. The possibilities that his mind conjectured were almost certainly far more entertaining any way.

"Have you tried asking Foreman and Cameron?" Wilson asked. House twiddled his cane, with nothing else to fiddle with.

"And tell them what, Chase has been living with me for the past few days and he's disappeared for an hour, and I'm all hyped up? 'Cause _that _won't sound at all suspicious." House responded.

Wilson raised his eyebrows.

"Come on, you're House, omnipresent, all knowing, all pervading. If you wanted to ask them, you could find a way. Hell, from you, they probably wouldn't blink twice if you asked them to find J.F. Kennedy for you," Wilson said incredulously. "You just don't like to think that anyone could know more about him than you. You want to work it out all by yourself," Wilson guessed. House scowled, disgruntled that Wilson knew him so well that he had managed to pin down feelings that even he hadn't fully identified yet.

Wilson's expression softened.

"Are you really that worried about him? Don't you think that maybe he just got fed up playing patient and went to stay with a friend somewhere?" House glared at Wilson. It seemed to be his expression of choice today.

"I'm not _worried_ about him. I just don't want to lose a plaything. The other ducklings will be sad. And I spent time and… well no money, but time and effort, stopping him from doing himself in the first time. What's the point in putting all that to waste? And I hate interviews. And intensivists are rare, especially ones with the teasing potential that Chase has." Wilson bit his tongue to prevent himself from expressing the thought that that was an awful lot of reasons to answer a simple question. Wilson suspected that House was trying to convince himself as much as, if not more than, Wilson.

"And Chase doesn't have any friends." House finished, answering the second part of Wilson's question.

"How do you know?" Wilson challenged, as much to contest House's conviction as for any other reason.

"Do you see him rushing off after work every night? Because I see him working overtime a lot, and taking weekend shifts. He doesn't have time to make friends." House responded. "I guess he might have friends in Australia," he acquiesced, "but I'm pretty sure that's some place far, far away."

"Look, House, unless you have the faintest clue where to start looking, I don't see what you can do without his cooperation. He's a grown man, he can take care of himself." Wilson said.

"The point is he _won't _take care of himself." House mumbled. Wilson sighed and spun his chair round to fact House fully.

"What do you want me to do then?" He asked. Wilson was quite willing to help Chase, despite whatever problems had passed between them, but it seemed to him that House had just come here to complain. Which wasn't unusual, but was nevertheless tedious.

House studied the end of his cane thoughtfully, considering the question.

"Get your car keys," he instructed, "we're going duckling fishing."

* * *

Chase sat, shivering, in the deserted doorway of an abandoned house in a fairly shoddy part of town. It was such a cliché, but perhaps that was why Chase had ended up here. It was obvious. Chase had left House's apartment not really knowing where he was going. He wasn't hugely familiar with the area around House's apartment, and whilst he was aware that his own place couldn't be more than a half hour walk or so away, he found that his feet led him in the opposite direction.

Chase had left House's apartment on impulse, because he felt suffocated and confused by the emotions running through his head. He hoped that maybe when he was alone, his mind would be clearer. So instead of turning towards his apartment, where he would undoubtedly face awkward glances from the respectable middle class neighbours whom he barely knew, who would surely have realised something was off, or at least would if they saw Chase as he was now, he simply sought solitude.

For a few hours, he had walked aimlessly in vaguely the same direction, avoiding the busy places, heading down the deserted streets until he found himself in the outer suburbs of the city, and exhaustion had forced him to slow down and stop.

So now he found himself alone. But it didn't seem to have given his thoughts any clarity. All Chase felt was confusion. Whereas days before, all he had wished was to be free from his body, from his life, now, when he had no one and nothing to stop him, he felt no impulsion to do anything about it. He couldn't decide whether he had simply given up on any desire to anything that required positive action, or if some of his hope in life had been rekindled by, dare he even think it, House. His thoughts veered from one extreme to the other, and then swerved onto other, completely irrational thoughts. What was the better kind of pasta to serve with a mushroom sauce, penne, or fusilli? How many men had Cameron slept with in the past year? Which came first, the chicken or the egg, his mother's alcohol problem or her hatred of Chase?

Chase shook the thoughts away, wondering if he was really going crazy. He focused on his material sensations and surroundings. He had lost track of all time, and he wasn't wearing a watch. The sky was ominously grey, threatening snow, hiding the time of day. Chase shivered, realising that the flimsy t-shirt he wore would be no protection against the snow, pushing himself further back into the unyielding concrete of the doorstep that he occupied, though it offered little shelter. Chase registered with mild surprise that he did care that it was cold, and that the ground was damp, and that his joints were in varying stages of stiffness, numbness, coldness and pain. He couldn't decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

As the first flake of snow floated innocently to the ground, pausing momentarily on the pavement before the membranes broke and the liquid dispersed, Chase decided that it was probably a bad thing.

As another flake descended, and then another, soon turning into a steady fall, Chase suddenly found himself inexplicably giggling, like a naughty child, over the horrible predictability of it all. Breathing in deeply, ignoring the cold air as it hit the back of his throat, Chase yelled as loud as he could, "Come on then, give me all that you got!"

The snow flakes fell a little harder, and as Chase's mirth began to subside, his breath continued to catch, the freezing air stinging, until soon he felt his eyes begin to well up, and his breathing turned into racking sobs. Huddling in on himself, Chase let his emotions and thoughts fade away, and soon found himself asleep.


	10. Chapter 10

House sat in the passenger seat of Wilson's car, gingerly rubbing his leg, before finally giving into temptation and popping another Vicodin. As Wilson glanced at him sidelong, House shot him a defiant look.

"That's the third in 45 minutes House. We've been driving for hours. You have no idea where he could be. Don't you think we should get back?" Wilson tried.

"No." House responded, then after a brief pause, he added, "Did you ever see that movie Cast Away, Tom Hanks stranded on a desert island?" Wilson blinked in confusion, then answered hesitantly, "No."

"It had a Wilson in it," House elaborated. Wilson gritted his teeth, sure that he wasn't going to like where this was going. "Wilson was a volley ball. He didn't speak much." House paused. "You could learn a lot from Wilson."

Wilson sighed, giving up on any chance of getting House to listen to the voice of reason. They had indeed been driving for hours, so that now it was five o'clock in the evening, well and truly dark, with snow piling up against walls. They had returned to Chase's apartment twice, to no avail, and to House's too, with the same result. He hadn't turned up at the hospital, either, not at PPTH or at Princeton General, either as a doctor or as a patient.

Wilson was worried about House. He didn't know why he was getting so emotionally involved; it simply wasn't like him, and it certainly wasn't like him to show it so overtly. Though Wilson was concerned about Chase, too, he couldn't believe that the younger man was simply wondering around outside in this. There must be someone that he knew, somewhere, who had taken him in for the night.

Eventually Wilson broke the silence. "I can't take any more time off work, House". He had made an unconvincing phone call to Cuddy earlier in the morning, when it became apparent that he was supposed to be House's chauffer for the day, informing her that he had the flu. Cuddy had sounded half suspicious, given the sufferers so far, and half concerned that she was going to have to shut the hospital down owing to the apparent flu epidemic.

"All the more reason not to give up now, then" House mumbled. If Wilson hadn't been concentrating on controlling the car through the icy, slippery roads, he would have stared at House in amazement. He had never realised the sense of… whatever it was that House felt towards Chase, was so strong. Sighing resignedly, he turned down a side street he didn't think they'd tried yet, and switched on the radio.

* * *

Chase awoke suddenly, bolting forwards, before realising that he had no where to go. At the sound of a shouting voice, Chase looked around and realised what had awoken him. Collected on the pavement were a group of hooded youths, drinking beer and flashing cigarettes as they boisterously strove to outdo each other doing wheelies on bikes. Chase huddled further into the doorway, wanting to avoid confrontation. He had a bad feeling about this.

Over the next half hour or so, Chase sat pulled back into the doorway, stifling the chattering of his teeth and the increasing urge to cough, wishing that he had had the sense to get out of here before night fell. Though earlier, it hadn't seemed to matter where he went, or what he did, suddenly, Chase found that he had begun to care about his safety again. He had really picked a time for it, he contemplated almost idly as one of the youths picked up a stone from the side of the road and threw it up at the building. All the windows had long been broken, quite possibly in this very same way, Chase realised, but now the youths turned there competition towards seeing who could throw a rock highest. Chase felt a flare of anger. They had yet to show any real malice, but this kind of petty, mindless crime was almost as bad to his mind. It was just a waste.

As one of the rocks fell, hitting a particularly brawny boy (it wasn't really right to call him that, that suggested innocence) on the forehead, the mood changed. Squaring up, the youth flicked his cigarette aside (as it landed a metre or two away from Chase, he realised that it was no normal cigarette), he walked up to another yob, and shoved him roughly from behind. Though Chase couldn't hear the words exchanged, he could see that the party just got nasty. As the two broke into a scuffle, the others looked nervously on, until the first youth pulled something out with a flash, and Chase realised it was a knife. Suddenly, all the banter stopped. The fighting pair pulled apart from each other, and Chase could see from the look in the eye of the armed one that this wasn't something he'd ever really done before, at least not with any more intent than to scare someone. But now he was surrounded by a group of his "friends", aware that he was being judged.

"Hey man, back off, it was just a stupid game," one of the surrounding youths said. Chase sat helplessly looking on, still unwilling to call any attention to himself, and aware that there as probably very little he could do anyway. But as he sat, as motionless as possible, Chase felt a cough rise within his throat that he was too late to stop, and his attempt only made it worse. He let out a strangled choke, followed by a whole bout, and suddenly, all the attention of the group was focused on him. Hysteria rose within Chase, brought on by panic, and he almost felt an urge to laugh again. He was turning into a living stereotype, a cartoonist's creation. A bubbling laugh rose within him, coming out somewhere half between a cough and a giggle, and Chase found himself muttering to himself "It must be a dream, it has to be a dream!" His eyes flickering over the now menacingly approaching youths, Chase bit back his mirth, suddenly finding that in an instant, the feeling had been replaced by the cold weight of fear in his gut.

"What ya laughing at? You fucking crazy or something?" the lead youth, who was now flicking the knife in and out of it's casing, asked vehemently. Chase lowered his eyes, drawing his knees in protectively, realising that any avenue of escape had been cut off by the circling youths. Considering they didn't seem to have much between the ears, Chase wondered how they had come together so strategically. He thought with trepidation that it was probably practice.

"I asked you a fucking question," the kid repeated, his voice slowly measured. Chase glanced around the circle, as if hoping to see a get out clause, then opened his mouth and whispered, "I'm not laughing. I'm not doing anything." Chase was aware that this probably wasn't the right thing to say, but he had a feeling that whatever he said would be wrong. These guys were just looking for an excuse for trouble, and they had found one, albeit a pretty rubbish one.

"Don't. fucking. Lie." Spat the kid, and then his foot shot out, and he delivered a vicious kick to Chase's side, the force of which caused his knees to flop sideways, leaving his mid section exposed. Chase realised with inexplicable clarity that he had just become the new focus of attention for the angered youth, hyped up on alcohol and dope. Whilst the youth hadn't really wanted to attack a member of his own group, Chase was fair game, and an opportunity for the brute to prove that he could hold his own. Chase tried to tune out of the world around him as the second kick came, and then the third, but it didn't work. As always, all he could feel was the pain.

* * *

A/N: sorry that this is a rather short chapter, but I felt that this was the best place to cut it off. Nice and cruel. Plus it's come a little earlier than usual. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed! 


	11. Chapter 11

By nine o clock at night, Wilson was on the verge of just turning round and driving back, regardless of House's wishes. The only reason he had kept going so long was because it was unusual for House to show he cared about anything, and when he did, Wilson knew that it was important. But he suspected that House had only kept going so long out of sheer stubbornness, because he refused to admit that he could be wrong. He turned to House to speak his mind, but House spoke first. "I know," he admitted wearily. "But we can keep looking on the way back."

As a gang of teenagers rode out of a street, House glanced down. House didn't recognise it; it was dark, and lined by tall, abandoned grey concrete buildings with gapingly empty windows. House instructed Wilson, "Turn down there. We haven't looked there." He wasn't sure why he was forcing Wilson to keep going. He was no longer sure whether it was because he honestly believed that they might still find Chase, or whether he simply couldn't bring himself to admit that he had been wrong, that there was nothing he could do.

Wilson swung the car into the deserted street, and House peered out of the windows, looking for any sign of something living in the small circle of bright light that the headlights cast on the still fresh, white snow. Wilson drove slowly down the street, as much because of the treacherous road conditions as to allow House to look.

"Stop", House ordered. Wilson glanced at House dubiously, but stopped the car anyway, expecting it to be only a shadow, or an empty box, or a homeless person, as it had been every other time that House had ordered the car to stop. He turned the heating on full blast as House hopped (well, not quite) out of the car and pressed his hands against the warmth, longingly looking forwards to his central heated apartment.

House made his way over to the doorway carefully, struggling to stay upright on the slippery surface of the pavement, now completely covered in snow. As he approached, the foot sticking out told him that he had been right, and that it was a person sleeping in the doorway. As an exercise, the whole day had been highly unhealthy from House's point of view. He wasn't used to caring about things, but as they had searched through the streets of Princeton, they had encountered various homeless people dressed in tatty rags, huddling in doorways to escape the cold, and House had again felt that surge of guilt that Chase kept bringing out in him.

House approached the lifeless body cautiously, wanting to avoid a violent encounter with a drunken bum (although he had to admit that at least similar encounters throughout the day had significantly quelled his guilt). But staring closely at the limb that protruded from the doorway, House quickened his pace as much as he could. The foot was wearing his sneaker.

"Wilson!" he yelled, closing in on the doorway, then – "Chase", he breathed, staring down at the barely recognisable face in front of him. Ignoring the pain in his leg, House awkwardly sat down by his lifeless employee, noting immediately the cold dampness of the doorway, which provided little shelter against the snow. Rubbing his fingers against Chase's ice cold skin, he felt for a pulse, and was relieved when he found the beat, though in contrast to it's rhythm over the past few days, it was now alarmingly slow. Beneath his fingers, House felt Chase stir from his uncomfortably bent position. "Chase?" He asked, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. Hope leapt within him as Chase's eyelids began to flicker open, finally revealing the oddly bright eyes beneath. Chase moved as if to sit up, and was overtaken by a bout of coughing. Manoeuvring himself so that Chase was leant against him, House placed his hand on Chase's back as he continued his coughing, unable to restrain the thought that he was glad that this was happening out here, in the dark where no one could see, rather than in the hospital. Turning his attention on Chase, he was alarmed to see that along with a string of green yellow sputum, the front of Chase's t-shirt was now spattered with blood.

"Wilson! Get over here, I found him!" House called again, relieved to hear the car door slamming shut a moment later.

With the coughing under control, Chase leaned back weakly against House, unable to support his own weight, and shut his eyes.

"Stay with me, Chase," House ordered, seeing the youngest duckling slipping away from him. "27 year old male, coughing up blood and green yellow sputum, differential diagnosis?" House asked, hoping not only to keep his fellow with him but also to find out what the hell had happened to him. Chase inhaled as if to speak, but was rewarded only with another bout of coughing as his head flopped against House's shoulder.

House pinched Chase's arm, hard, eliciting a stifled moan from Chase that was just enough to convince him that the younger man was still awake. "That a boy," he said with false cheer.

Wilson approached the doorway, not knowing what to expect, but seeing Chase lying there with House by his side, he jogged the remaining distance and withdrew his cell phone from his pocket.

"Ambulance?" he asked House, wanting to make up for his lack of faith in House's instincts as quickly as possible. House nodded and Wilson dialled 911, turning back towards the car to get his medical bag.

A moment later, he appeared again at House's side, unzipping his bag and withdrawing a flashlight and a stethoscope, which House quickly relieved him of, putting the stethoscope to his own ears and slid the bell under Chase's t-shirt, noting the slight whimper of pain that Chase emitted. Listening for a moment, House's face drew further into a frown.

Wilson looked worriedly over Chase. Reaching for his thermometer, he forced Chase's mouth open and inserted it beneath his tongue. He withdrew it a moment later. "Temperature at 90f", he informed House. "Low, but not as low as it might be."

"Breath sounds suggest pneumonia, could be combating the low temperature caused by the hypothermia," House suggested. "But for the pneumonia to come on this quickly, it must be hospital acquired."

As the sounds of sirens rounded the corner, Wilson took Chase's limp weight, allowing House to struggle to his feet as he flagged the ambulance down.

"Robert Chase, age 27, breaths at 6 per minute, rales on both sides, temperature at 90F," House informed the EMTs as they stepped out of the ambulance. "You a doctor?" One of them, a young man with an excessively large nose, asked. House rolled his eyes. "No, I just enjoy hanging about on street corners and falsely diagnosing bums," he responded. The EMTs ignored him as they relieved Wilson of Chase's weight, beginning to carry out there own tests, despite the information that House had already fed to them. House hovered frustratedly.

"Will you get on with it and stick him in the ambulance already?" He asked the EMTs grumpily. Big Nose looked up at him, clearly annoyed. May I ask who you are, _sir_?" He asked.

"I'm his doctor and his boss. So stop messing about and just do what I say," he ordered the EMT. Big Nose scowled at him, but the pair began loading him onto the gurney nevertheless.

The EMTs climbed into the ambulance, carefully navigating the gurney inside, and House hauled himself in without question.

"Meet you at PPTH", said House, slamming the door shut behind him. As the sirens whirred into the distance, Wilson was left alone in the dark. The snow had finally stopped, and he stared up at the sky. The moon shone brightly above, illuminating the dancing shadows of the clouds in a deep, smoky grey. Wilson looked at the ground before him, covered in dirtied snow, and caught sight of the spatter of red. A dog barked in the distance. Wilson shivered and snapped his eyes away from the ground and the despairing feeling that it left him with, climbing into the warm leather interior of his car, and turning the radio up extra loud.


	12. Chapter 12

Wilson stomped into the ER at PPTH, still shaking off the cold from the outside. Immediately he sensed a disturbance, and it didn't take much to guess what it was. Sure enough, glancing round, his eyes came to rest on House, blocking the door to trauma 2 with his cane, surrounded by a group of flustered nurses and doctors.

"He's _my _patient, and _I_ say who's coming in here," he said to the crowd in a patronising tone, as if explaining to preschoolers.

"Dr. House, this isn't your department, and I'm afraid you don't control the E.R." responded a doctor, a somewhat rounded, greying woman whom Wilson recognised as the head of the E.R. Wilson stepped forwards to diffuse the situation, one of his favourite ways of spending a night with House. Or at least one of the most common.

Luckily, Wilson was aware that Dr. Gweeney had long harboured something of a crush on him. He stepped into her line of sight. "Dr. Gweeney, how nice to see you!" he exclaimed. Dr. Gweeney turned a slight shade of pink, her anger almost visibly evaporating as her features formed into a sickeningly bashful smile. Behind him, Wilson was aware of House putting his fingers to his mouth as if to mimic vomiting, and he stepped back slightly, pressing down hard on House's foot.

"How's your sister, has she gotten over her cold?" Wilson asked, injecting a note of concern into his voice. Dr. Gweeney could be quite a gossip in the staff room, until she became aware that Wilson was there. The woman's ears began to turn a slight shade of pink. Feeling that the confrontation was passing, some of the surrounding doctors and orderlies, gathered more at the chance to witness a scene than to be of use, drifted away.

"Oh yes, she's quite well now. How sweet of you to remember Dr. Wilson!" Gweeney squeaked excitedly. Wilson flashed her a smile.

"Now is Dr. House causing a problem?" Wilson asked. Gweeney peeped over Wilson's shoulder, remembering again the cause of her annoyance.

"I was just trying to explain to Dr. House that this is my department, and all patients have to be treated by my staff." She informed Wilson, frustration creeping into her voice.

"Of course, I quite understand that," Wilson smiled back knowingly, "but perhaps Dr. House hasn't fully explained. We've been treating this patient for a while now outside of the hospital, and he really gets quite anxious in hospitals, so we'd really like to be able to personally handle his case to avoid any unnecessary aggravation to his condition." Gweeney faltered, faced with the full force of Wilson's charm.

"Oh…" she stuttered. "Well in that case, yes of course, I agree… Wouldn't you like someone to help you?" She asked, clearly hoping for a personal invite.

"Thank you very much Gertrude, but really, we'll be quite alright." Wilson answered, backing into the room behind him. House opened the doors and the two slipped inside, leaving Gweeney standing alone outside, wondering quite how she'd managed to lose her footing.

* * *

Inside the room, Wilson's face slipped from charming to serious, and House's from childishly insolent to business like.

"I take it no one has realised who he is yet, then?" Wilson asked, turning to House. House shook his head in response and limped closer to the bed. Wilson avoided asking him if, and how, he planned on keeping that from everyone, in favour of joining House at the bed head. Chase's face was largely covered by an oxygen mask, and his hair and forehead were obscured by the protective head and neck padding put in place by the paramedics. In his current state, covered in stubble and looking significantly worse for wear than usual, it was no real wonder that no one had recognized him yet.

"He's already on warm saline and oxygen. We'll get him on Zosyn and Gentamicin intravenously to combat the pneumonia." House pulled down the sheet, revealing Chase's chest. Wilson let out a gasp as he saw the freshly forming purple bruises that marred the otherwise perfectly formed chest.

"How…?" he muttered, leaving the question unfinished.

"Looks like Chase found some new friends whilst he was out playing," House remarked.

"Or not," Wilson answered back, gently probing the area. "Feels like he has a broken rib or two," Wilson commented. "You should send him for x-rays. At least there's no distension of the abdomen." House remained silent, allowing Wilson to discover for himself what he had already found out. "He should really be in the I.C.U., House. Broken ribs, pneumonia, hypothermia, severe blows to the abdomen, still recovering from an Elavil overdose… He could suffer from multiple respiratory or cardiac problems at the very least." Wilson said, finishing his examination and glancing up at House.

House pursed his lips. "I'm taking him up to the private room three doors from my office as soon as I'm satisfied that he's stable."

"House, there's no way you can deal with this all alone. And you're not going to be able to hide the details. Cuddy is going to be on your back for one thing, I'm guessing as soon as she hears about the little upset you caused in here earlier. That combined with the fact that you've actually been seen out of your office, treating a patient without some inexplicable disease, and you're actually _with_ the patient, is sure to attract her attention." Wilson argued.

He should have known by now that it was fairly useless to argue with House. "Chase has had the flu. He went for a little walk in the park to clear his head. In his weakened state, with his wits dulled even further than usual, he tripped over a badly placed log, bruising his ribs, where he lay for a number of hours before I heroically discovered him on my way back from the liquor store."

"Well that adds a note of reality," Wilson muttered under his breath

"And now he's developed pneumonia," house continued, "probably from the shoddy conditions in this hospital. And he wants to be in the familiar surroundings of the diagnostic floor, near to his new hero, aka me. The pneumonia should be enough to get Cuddy eating out of the palm of my hand. She's really never learned to appreciate the beauty of law suits," House finished, reaching for Chase's file.

Wilson simply sighed at House's predictable audacity. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but seemed to think better of it, shutting it again. A moment later, he started once more, only to again shut his mouth without saying anything.

House looked up from the file, amused. "Are you a goldfish, or are you actually going to say something?" he asked.

Wilson frowned. "And how are you planning on keeping the Elavil overdose from everyone?" He asked. House stroked his chin, eyes tilted upwards, as if deep in thought. Then his eyes lit up exaggeratedly and he held his finger up in the air, signifying in a cartoonish style that he had an idea. Deliberately placing his finger in the file, he ripped out a page with a flourish and scrumpled it into a ball before shoving it in his pocket. "What overdose?" he asked innocently.

"It'll still be on the computer," Wilson pointed out.

"Who's going to bother looking at the computer when we have the hard copy of his notes right here? Besides, I'm his physician now. Nobody else has the right to look up his notes. Confidentiality and all that." House checked over the monitors attached to Chase, then went to arrange the transfer downstairs.

Wilson leaned in against the bed rail, studying the sickly face of the man before him. "I don't know what you've done to him," he said simply, shaking his head, before setting about tending to the young man's wounds.

* * *

A/N: I'm sorry about Gertrude Gweeney, I just couldn't help slipping someone faintly ridiculous into the mix. 


	13. Chapter 13

House leaned far back in his chair as he turned his I-pod up and shut off the outside world. Shutting his eyes, he was unaware of another presence in the room until his I-pod suddenly went dead. Opening his eyes, he blinked unconcernedly up at Cuddy, standing before him.

"Dr. House. I have an ethical dilemma that I'd like you to consult on, that being your speciality. You're the head of, I don't know, let's say a hospital somewhere," Cuddy began with an icy smile that House had come to know as her most dangerous expression over the years. "One day, you arrive in that hospital to discover that the previous evening, three doctors, all supposedly ill with the "flu", have arrived at the dead of night, with one of the doctors miraculously transformed into a patient in a critical condition, and then proceed to ban all the appropriate staff members from seeing said patient, and indeed actually _lie _about his identity for the next 24 hours. Let's just say that happened. What would you do, Doctor House?"

House assumed an expression of deep thought, and then responded, "I'd probably give him a slap on the bottie, tell him he'd been a very naughty boy, and send him to his room without any supper."

Cuddy merely blinked. If anything, she'd expected something more scathing.

"Explain, House". She demanded simply. House looked at her, realising that some kind of response was going to be necessary.

"Can't you just be happy that I'm exhibiting concern over an employee?" He asked. Cuddy frowned in response.

"No. Because that would be so out of character that I would either have to come to the conclusion that you've suffered some kind of cranial trauma that's altering your judgement, or that there's something else even worse going on." She answered.

"Well then I suggest you ignore it and hope it goes away." House advised innocently. Cuddy took a deep breath, and for a minute it looked like she would explode.

"Just tell me one thing," she began, her voice carefully measured. "Did you put him there?"

House stared back at her, meeting her gaze. "What, do you mean did I personally carry him to that bed? Now now Lisa, that's a little insensitive, I'm a cripple after all…" House trailed off as Cuddy began slowly to shake her head from side to side, and realised that now might be the time to get just a _little _bit serious. "No. No, I didn't put him there. I found him the way he was, and I brought him here."

Cuddy continued to stare at him for a number of moments, then turned on her heel and walked towards the door. "I'm watching you, House."

House stared at her retreating ass, and anyone would have thought that he was admiring the view. Then he hit a button on his I pod, and returned his thoughts to the trail that they had been stuck on all morning.

* * *

Beep. Beep. Beep.

It was a familiar noise, but Chase couldn't quite seem to associate it with anything in his mind. Thoughts and sensations buzzed nonsensically around his mind, half remnants of the distorted dream world in which he had been ensconced, and half reality, though it was proving more than a little difficult to differentiate between the two.

There was something metallic tasting round his mouth, something biting into his cheeks.

He felt uneasy, afraid, and somewhere in his mind the vague shadow of a figure, an ominous presence, lurked, and the fact that he couldn't tell whether this was from the dream world or the real world further alarmed him.

His throat felt constricted and sore, in fact his entire respiratory system felt clogged and heavy, as if his chest was filled with something viscous and soupy. Every time he breathed in, it felt as if something was stabbing into his side, from the inside, not the out, and he weakly coughed.

His eyes felt glued shut, but he couldn't work out why.

"Chase?" Robert was startled by the masculine voice, and recognised its owner before he had even registered the fact that he was the person being called for.

The shock gave him enough momentum to open his eyes, and as he blinked, he became aware that he was in familiar surroundings, seeing a hospital room from a viewpoint that was becoming increasingly recognisable.

Finally his eyes adjusted enough to reveal the form of Gregory House, standing by his bedside, leaning against the rail. Chase was still too foggy to decide whether or not this was actually reality, and he could feel his eyelids drooping as the insurmountable force of sleep came over him. He felt warm and leaden, and he still couldn't quite decide whether or not he had woken up at all. His lids dropped shut, and he felt himself drifting off again, surrendering once again to his dreams.

House sighed, leaning against the foot of the bed. Chase had been kept sedated for the past few days, as much because House wanted him compliant in order to convince the other staff that this was a routine case as to benefit Chase's health. Of course, the constant hovering that House had done over the past few days had done nothing to alleviate suspicions, and amongst the whisperings of the hospital grapevine he had heard numerous theories, ranging from Chase having a mysterious and contagious disease that was being kept secret to keep the hospital out of trouble to a violent love affair between House and Chase, being the true cause of Chase's stay. House had done nothing to alleviate suspicions.

House had only allowed two nurses to take care of Chase, both boring, efficient but lacking in enthusiasm. That way there was at least some hope of keeping Chase's true condition a secret. To justify this decision to Cuddy, he had argued that Chase would want to retain as much of his dignity as possible, given the fact that he had to work with these people, and bed baths were hardly a way of earning the respect of your juniors. Cuddy had reluctantly agreed, though her eyes narrowed with suspicion. But seeing as House seemed, curiously, to be genuinely interested in the welfare of his youngest employee, she had let it slide without probing for the moment. In this particular case, she didn't want to find out anything that she didn't want to know.

For his own part, House had secretly enjoyed watching the sails of the hospital rumour mill spin, and he had used this to justify to himself the amount of time that he had spent in Chase's room. That and the fact that it left him to watch General Hospital in peace, and Cuddy seemed to have decided that he was immune from clinic duty whilst he was in there.

But now it had been three days, and Chase was being weaned off the sedatives.

House couldn't decide whether he was glad that Chase was getting healthy again, or annoyed that he was going to have to deal with him again. Maybe annoyed wasn't the right word. Apprehensive might fit better. Not even an entirely unpleasant apprehension. House pushed the thoughts away as he always did, made a note on Chase's file, and then withdrew from the room.

* * *

An hour later, Wilson spied House in the clinic. He couldn't think what he could possibly be doing there, seeing as he pretty much had a get out of jail free pass on the clinic duty front for the moment.

Wilson could only think of one reason that House would be in the clinic, and that was that there was something that he was so desperate to get his mind off that he had had to resort to taunting the clinic patients. Shaking his head slightly to himself, Wilson turned away and headed towards Chase's room.

Wilson entered the dimly lit room and noted the movement of the body in the bed, but Chase's eyes remained closed, and to all appearances, he remained fast asleep. Wilson seated himself in the chair beside the bed, a large comfy armchair pinched from someone's office, evidence of House's occupation of the room over the past few days.

"Chase?" Wilson asked. The figure remained still, although Wilson sensed a slightly unnatural stiffness that suggested the patient was more awake than he would like Wilson to know.

"He cares about you, you know," Wilson murmured. He didn't quite know what he hoped to come out of this. He wasn't even sure that Chase was awake, or whether he was lucid enough to remember what Wilson told him

"I don't know how, I don't exactly know why, but in his own way, he does." Wilson couldn't quite be sure, but he thought that the rate of the heart monitor might have ever so slightly increased since he had entered the room. Deciding that he had played as much of a role as he should at the present moment and in the present circumstances, Wilson rose from his chair and exited the room.

The tension in Chase's body eased, and he shifted in the bed, trying to find a position that would relieve the uncomfortable tension in his chest.

His mind whirring, it would be a long time before the young man succumbed to sleep.

* * *

Round the last bend of the track, lean into the corner, that's it, just right, accelerate down the final straight, watch that bastard coming up behind you – blank.

"Damn it! Level 9!" House cursed as the battery of the console died and the screen faded to nothingness. Placing the offending toy to the side, House looked up at the sleeping man on the bed.

"You know, I've never wanted to kill myself," he remarked casually. Chase's face remained immobile. "Some people might think otherwise. Some people might think that knowing you might die if you don't take a treatment, and knowing that you'll lose the use of a leg if you do, and choosing the leg, is a suicide wish. But people will do desperate things at desperate times."

Chase coughed, quickly followed by a wince, and then his eyelids began to flicker open. He fixed his gaze upon House.

"I wasn't desperate," he whispered. "I didn't feel a thing." Whatever else Chase might have had to say was broken off in a violent fit of coughing. House gazed on unmoving for a moment, then reached for a syringe and injected it into Chase's IV. Chase fixed House with a stare, and Chase couldn't deny that that wasn't a desperate stare.

* * *

House looked up from the screen of his computer as he caught sight of a set faced Cameron marching down the corridor towards his office. House contemplated whether it was too late to hurry to the door and lock it. In answer to his question, Cameron reached the conference room and slammed the file she was holding down on the glass table. House just had time to grab his ear phones and switch on his I pod in a last ditch attempt to fend her off before Cameron pushed his door open and stood in front of him, hands on hips and pose unusually determined.

House blinked at her unconcernedly.

"It's as if Cuddy has been brought to life before my eyes. Found a new charity case husband to get all wound up about?" He asked. His light tone disguised the uneasiness that he actually felt, another rare feeling that he hadn't often found stirred before this whole affair had started. But House knew that Cameron could only be here about one thing, and it was an issue that he didn't particularly want to face.

"The patient in room 206 is _Chase?_" She demanded. House assumed an air of surprise.

"He is? Well I guess that explains why he hasn't been in work for the past few weeks. So, did you manage to work out if he's faking or not yet?"

"My friend has been admitted as a patient with severe pneumonia just three doors away from this office, and you didn't think to tell me?" She demanded. House raised his eyebrows interestedly.

"Hmm, it's funny how as soon as a duckling gets sick, they immediately assume the status of 'friend'. Or husband, as has been known to happen in the past. Have you informed Chase of this fact? That's sure to make him feel all better real quick."

Cameron glared at him. Though it hadn't yet achieved the venom of a Cuddy Glare, it was still surprisingly powerful, House contemplated.

"You've acted irresponsibly and despicably. Did you just want to hurt me? I have a right to know when a colleague needs my help!" She insisted.

"What, so you can go smother them with love and ineffectual medical judgement, just to appease your own guilt?" House asked, still trying to sound disinterested. Cameron stepped back slightly, her posture immediately defensive and her eyes suddenly suspiciously bright. House could say that he hadn't meant to hit so close to the bone, but that would be lying. He didn't quite know what had prompted the attack, seeing as now that Cuddy was convinced of the veracity of his story, and Chase was slowly but surely on the mend, he had nothing to lose from the knowledge of Chase's condition becoming more widely known.

A little voice somewhere right at the back of his mind choose this moment to speak up. 'Ahh, but you do have something to lose, don't you? Because as soon as everyone else knows he's here, you won't have him to yourself anymore. You won't have his dependence, you won't have any control.' House shut the voice up by barking at Cameron.

"I've already got one subordinate out of action. I don't need you all running around, playing happy families, just because Chase was idiotic and got himself sick. Go do my clinic duty." His tone was more forceful than he would have liked, not out of deference towards Cameron's feelings, but rather because it gave away the fact that he cared what she did.

Cameron turned away, leaving House only a moment to catch a glimpse of her face crumpling, and walked out of the room without saying another word. House leaned back in his chair, the music still blaring. When had he become so caught up in this whole affair? When had he undeniably started to care?


	14. Chapter 14

Two days later, and Chase's stay in the hospital had officially been discovered by the whole hospital. Now somewhat more lucid and awake, Chase spent large portions of his day either putting on an appreciative face as hospital staff (notably female, of varying ages and questionable motives) dropped by to deliver grapes, cuddly toys and sympathy or, when he really couldn't hold the mask up any longer, pretending to be asleep, though it cost him his pride. These were his colleagues, people that he knew, and regardless of what his long term intentions were, he hated for them to see him vulnerable. He hated for anyone to see him vulnerable.

Though the publicity had brought him many more visitors, there was one notable absentee. Whilst House remained Chase's primary care giver, his visits to Chase's room were now limited to perfunctory, routine checks on Chase's health. Instead of his usual jibes, House remained largely silent during these visits, or carefully waited until Chase was asleep to check the charts.

Chase wasn't exactly upset by the lack of attention from House. His feelings towards the man were confused to say the least. In general, he was happier to live with the silence than expose anything else, anything that might be dangerous, threatening. So Chase complied obediently when House came to check up on him, equalling House's non-existent conversation.

Another advantage of the absent doctor was that Chase was now able to plan his imminent escape from the hospital. Although he knew that House would try and force him to stay in the hospital for at least another week, Chase had no such plans, and as a respected physician in the hospital, predicted that as long as he could avoid House, Cameron, and possibly Wilson, he should be able to convince the nurses that he was ready to go home, even if he did do it against hospital advice.

* * *

Chase's chance came the next day, and it couldn't have been more perfect. A new case had come in, an old friend of Cuddy's who she had forced House into taking on. As a result, Cameron, House, and Foreman, were all otherwise occupied. Chase didn't quite know what his plans were once he had escaped the hospital. Right now, all he knew was that he needed to escape. Over that last week or two, his freedom of choice had been entirely removed, first by House, and now by the steady stream of well wishers who poured through his door, leaving Chase with little to no time to think.

Hauling himself into a sitting position, with his legs dangling over the edge of the bed, Chase broke into a violent bout of coughing that aggravated the pain in his side. Had he been in a more reasonable frame of mind, Chase might have reconsidered his decision to run away, but as it was, Chase simply ignored the annoyance, removing the drip from the back of his hand, flinching just slightly as he did so, and then pulling himself onto legs unsteady from lack of use.

He reached for the sports bag on the floor which Wilson had used to bring him some stuff from his apartment. That was another issue that remnants of logic were screaming at Chase was going to cause him problems. As far as he knew, his apartment was still in much the same state of disarray as it had been when he had made his unconscious exit from it what felt like a lifetime ago. Chase couldn't quite remember the state that it was in, but he was sure it wouldn't be pretty. On top of that, there would be no food in the fridge. All in all, things were hardly set up for a man still suffering from pneumonia. But Chase refused to listen to the voice of reason. He felt stifled by the circumstances that had been forced upon him, as they had been his whole life. At least since his getaway to the states, he had felt like he had had some control over his life, control that had now been removed.

Chase wrapped a protective arm around his injured side as he bent down to retrieve a hoodie and a pair of sweats from his bag, though it did little to alleviate the pain, and once again his cough flared up. Forcing himself to get on with it, he sat in the chair beside the bed and pulled the sweats on over his boxers, before shakily undoing the string of the flimsy hospital gown and painfully manoeuvring the hoodie over his head. Slipping his feet into a pair of sneakers that he didn't recognise, Chase zipped up the bag and again got to his feet, using items of furniture to help himself to the door.

Chase pushed the door open slowly and peered out into the deserted corridor. Three doors down, there was every chance that House and the remaining ducklings were sitting in the conference room, puzzling over the latest case. Chase headed in the opposite direction, aiming for the elevator at the other end of the floor, all the while hoping not to bump into anyone he recognised. There was something entirely familiar about this scenario, and Chase thought back to a few days earlier as he had escaped from House's apartment. That hadn't played out too well. But again, Chase refused to think about the flaws in his plan, like the fact that his disappearance would be discovered within hours if not minutes, and that the logical place to look for Chase would be at his apartment, the only place that he had to go, and that without continuing treatment for his pneumonia, there was every chance that the bacteria would again multiply and the infection would come back full force. Chase pushed the thoughts away. If he didn't allow himself to believe them, then they couldn't be true. It was a tactic that he had often resorted to in childhood, and it had never worked all that well then either. But he was well practised at it, and could push his brain into believing almost anything he wanted it to. At least for a few minutes. Then reality had this irritating tendency to catch up with him.

Chase had reached the elevator by now, his mind still swirling in a haze of thoughts. He couldn't quite recall if he had seen anyone as he travelled the last few metres to the elevator, so lost in his own world had he been, but no-one had stopped him, so he rather assumed he had made it.

The elevator came to a halt on the ground floor, just ten feet from the exit, and Chase put his head down, and, fuelled by adrenaline induced strength, steadily walked the last distance to his freedom.

The doors slid open, and Chase finally found himself outside, breathing in the cool wintry air. His short burst of energy rapidly fading, Chase tried to suppress his cough as he half stumbled towards the taxi rank outside the hospital.

Chase reached the empty cab waiting first in queue at the rank, and fumbled with the door handle before finally managing to pull the door open and flop into the back of the cab. The driver, a wizened looking Latino, turned to face him.

"You sure you shouldn't be leaving in one of those things?" the driver asked him, pointing at an ambulance. Too exhausted to play along, Chase instead gave the driver his address, and leant back in the seat with his eyes closed.

* * *

"He's WHAT?" The voice echoed down the corridor, stilling people as far away as the ICU.

Dolores, the middle aged nurse who was one half of the double act to which Chase's care in the hospital had been entrusted, wasn't often stirred by irate doctors, having been in the job for thirty years, but under the glare of the six foot two man, crippled or not, she positively cowered.

"He was here when I administered his medication at 11…" she mumbled.

"Well that's fine then!" House answered, his eyes wide with sarcastic menace. "When he turns up dead in a few days time, you can just explain to Cuddy that everything's fine, because at 11 this morning he was alive and accounted for. What more matters?"

Dolores took a step backwards, expecting at any moment to have the House's full and notorious wrath unleashed upon her, possibly in cane form. For a moment it looked as if House would affirm her suspicions, bending over the five foot four frame in a threatening fashion. But taking Dolores completely unawares, he instead stepped back, turned, and hobbled towards his office, marching past a worried looking Cameron and a raised eye browed Foreman before locking himself away in his office and switching on his I pod to full blast.

* * *

Three hours later, Wilson found him in much the same position. After ten minutes of knocking, finally House saw fit to open the door.

"Led Zep, Stairway to heaven. Can't interrupt a master whilst they're at work," he explained.

"It's a recording," Wilson pointed out, unimpressed.

"Who says I was talking about Led Zep?" House replied. Fed up of the game, Wilson decided to get to the point.

"I just heard Chase has gone," he said expectantly. House merely flopped back into his chair and looked up at him nonplussed.

"And what does this have to do with me?" he asked. Wilson sighed.

"For starters, you're his doctor. Then there's the fact that you're the only one who really knows what happened to him in the first place, the fact that it was you who took him into your home to stop him from killing himself, that it was you that coerced me into driving around for hours looking for him, you who lied to everyone to protect his job, you who's kept him locked up in your room all this time…" Wilson trailed off, feeling he had made his point. House looked affronted, as if he had just been accused of a heinous crime. Perhaps, to his mind, he had. Because all of those things suggested that he actually cared.

"Now now, Wilson," he said in a consoling voice, as if soothing a wife who had just accused him of having an affair. "There are perfectly good explanations for all of those things."

Wilson had finally decided he had had enough. This was House's mess, and he wasn't going to stand around and pick up the pieces this time.

"You know what House? That's just fine. Keep pretending you don't care. Wait and see what happens. Wait and see who gets hurt. I'm going home. Sort out your own mess." And he stomped out of the door.

House sat in silent shock. Wilson had been angry with him before, but he had never really expected this to happen this time. Because this time someone else was involved in House's mess. A third party was in danger. And usually, Wilson played a fairly big part in clearing up House's messes. House hadn't expected Wilson to abandon him, but more than that, he hadn't expected him to abandon Chase. Not because he thought Wilson particularly cared about Chase, but because as far as Wilson was concerned, Chase was surely little more than an innocent victim caught up in House's never ending mind games.

But then he thought back to his own actions over the past few weeks. If it wasn't for him, Chase most probably wouldn't be here right now. Almost certainly in fact. So where did the mess that existed now stop being Chase's and turn into his own?

At the back of his mind, House knew that he cared, and that this was as much his own mess as it was Chase's simply for that reason. And Chase had yet to show any sign that he was ready to help himself. Quite the opposite in fact.

* * *

It was dark by the time House pulled up outside Chase's apartment block. If House had allowed his emotions to get the better of him, he might have said that he was sad to be back here, in this same situation, weeks on, fearing what he would find inside. But he wasn't the emotional type, he assured himself.

Hoping that he would have a use for the bag of medical supplies in the passenger seat, he turned towards the entrance of the building and once again caught the elevator to the fifth floor.

The bulb had gone out over Apartment 504, nestled away in a bend at the end of the corridor, an architectural flaw that was testimony to the quality of the building.

But more worrying than this, the door was ajar, and there weren't any lights on on the inside either. It didn't look like anyone had been in here in weeks.

But House already knew that Wilson had been by since that night only a week ago, wordlessly tidying up the mess and destruction, the overt reek of something that smelt a little like death, if you wanted to be fanciful about it. And Wilson wasn't the type to leave the door ajar. So something had changed. Some form of life had been here.

House pushed the door open with only the point of his index finger, but made no move to enter the apartment. The door swung inwards silently. House gave his eyes a moment to adjust to the dark, and then stepped forwards.

The first thing that struck him was the smell. Most obviously, disinfectant, but almost as strong was the stench of vodka. And underneath it, not quite masked by the valiant efforts of Wilson, was the smell of stale vomit. House reached for the light switch by the door, not really expecting it to work, but, surprisingly, the bulb flickered into life, suddenly exposing the room before him in a cold, artificial light. The bulb that hung from the ceiling was bare. Perhaps the look Chase had been going for was masculine and minimal. Perhaps it was just the circumstances, but House thought it looked more like something from the refrigerator of a morgue. Glancing around the room, House noted the dark stains on the carpet which appeared to be seeping out from under the sofa, evidently an attempt by Wilson to conceal the past.

But then something more interesting caught House's attention. Sitting by the sofa was his own sports bag, the bag that Wilson had brought Chase's belongings to the hospital in. Which could only mean…

"Come out come out wherever you are!" House called childishly. But the call was as much to try and shake out his own fear, the atmosphere that the apartment created, as it was to try and locate his missing patient, employee, and whatever else it was that Chase meant to him.

Treading as stealthily as he could, as if he was playing hide and seek, House began to tour the room, checking off a whole load of ridiculous and unlikely places as he went, though of course it wasn't because he was fearful of what he might find.

Under the coffee table: nope. Behind the door: nope. Under the sofa throw: nope.

Having checked the rest of the apartment, House ventured towards the partition wall that divided the kitchenette from the living room. House flicked the switch to the side, and again, the room before him flickered into sight.

And there before him, sitting with his legs to his chest on the middle of the floor, surrounded by shards of glass, was Chase.

* * *

A/N: The rest of the story (there are still a few chapters to come) will be posted in the next week, because I'm going away for the next half year to a third world country, so I will be leaving behind! 


	15. Chapter 15

Chase didn't immediately look up as House entered the room. Indeed, he didn't show any sign of having noticed his entrance at all. Instead, his gaze was focused unblinkingly on the three items before him.

House followed the stare, and there he saw, lined up in a row, an empty bottle of pills, a medical journal, and an uncapped bottle of vodka.

Before he could stop to think, House felt the anger rise up within him. Discarding his cane, which seemed suddenly like an unnecessary hindrance, House lunged for the man before him, knocking him out of his curled up position and pushing him backwards against the counter.

"You still want to die? It didn't make a difference? It didn't make a difference to know that someone would care, someone would help, someone would give a damn, try and make things better?" Chase's eyes were no longer dead. They were alive, and wide, and pleading. "I'll fucking do the job myself then! I'm the only reason you're not dead already, so this time I'll fucking make sure it gets done right!" Flecks of spit landed on Chase's face as hands wrapped around his neck and his eyes began to water as he tried to gasp in breaths that wouldn't come, spiking the pain in his chest that came from an already compromised respiratory system, the weight of a six foot man pressing down on a broken body, the weight of accusing words pressing down on a broken mind. Stars began to swim before his eyes, specks of light blurred by salty tears, words flew at him nonsensically, pain assaulted his body, then darkness, not welcoming, not relieving, but cold, reviling darkness.

* * *

House could feel the convulsions running along the neck of the man beneath his hands, sobs that couldn't escape, and then the body fell lifeless and still. That was when it registered. Chase had struggled against death. Whether it was reflex or choice, House couldn't be sure, but it was enough. The fury faded, and House leaned back, off the crushed body. There were tears on the young face. The anger was gone, and in its place, House was flooded with shame, and despair. House retrieved his cane, leaning back against the counter, and then pressed his fingers to Chase's neck, no longer looking at Chase's face. The pulse was still there, still strong. The choked gasp that Chase drew in convinced House that the man was still breathing, just a little oxygen deprived. Pulling himself to his feet, House glanced around. As he looked, it became evident that the shards covering the floor had once been a vodka bottle, certified by the pool of clear, pungent liquid that seeped into the grouting of the tiles. He hoped that all of the alcohol was on the floor, and none of it inside Chase. Looking at the neat row of objects that Chase had been sitting before, House recognised an empty bottle of Elavil, a still full bottle of vodka, and, looking a little closer, saw that the medical journal beside it was by one Rowan Chase.

Half dragging, half heaving Chase, House managed to get him out of the kitchen and finally onto the sofa. His leg burned, but guilt kept him going.

* * *

Consciousness came back to him slowly, in increments, and with it came pain, and fear, but also, oddly, a sense of life, a sense of happiness, that it took him a few moments to work out. He wasn't dead, and he was glad.

Chase opened his eyes, and found that he was on the sofa. He was confused only for a moment before he remembered the events that must have put him there. Looking up, he found that House was perched on his coffee table, cane across his lap, and head buried in hands.

"I wasn't going to kill myself you know. Not this time." Chase whispered. House glanced up, then handed Chase a glass of water, trying not to think of the bruises already forming on Chase's neck that he had left there with the same hands. Chase swallowed, then coughed. House waited until the glass was half empty before leaning back and again placing his head in his hands. Chase didn't know whether to take that as an invitation to go on, but he knew that for the first time in he couldn't remember how long, he felt the need to explain.

"I was just thinking. The Chase family vices. The vodka, my mum. Aged 42. The journal, my dad. Aged 59. And then there's the pills. Me. Yet to claim. The lives and deaths of the Chase family." House raised his head to meet Chase's eyes, an air of understanding now existing between them. Chase fell silent.

"Why the first time? You can't tell me you weren't trying to kill yourself then." House asked, his voice unusually soft.

Chase remained silent for a long time, until House thought he might have fallen asleep. Maybe he had never been awake at all, maybe it had been a hallucination conjured by a guilty, sleep deprived mind.

But then, "I can't really say why. I just… I wasn't me any more. There was no me." Chase paused, as if trying to think of a way to phrase his so far nonsensical explanation. "All the good bits, all the happy bits, they were gone. I only had the bitter bits, the angry bits, the despairing bits. I felt like I was already dead. I felt like I was already in hell. There wasn't a way out." He tried. It was only the slightest insight into what he really felt, the melted water on the top of the iceburg, but it was all that he could put into words. It seemed to be enough for House at that moment though.

"And now? What's changed?" House asked.

"I…I don't know. Maybe… maybe hope. Maybe it's just instinct. Maybe I'm fed up of dying." Hidden by his hands, House allowed himself a slight smile. He hadn't said the words, but Chase had admitted it. He didn't want to die anymore. Unmasking his face, House looked up.

"I won't take control anymore. It's time for you to take back control. But if you want to live, you'll stop running away." He told Chase. Chase lowered his eyes, and House wasn't quite sure what to make of the gesture.

"House?" House watched the way Chase fiddled with his hands. "Can I come stay with you? I mean, just for a few days. Just – I don't want to go back to the hospital. I'm fed up of being smothered with sympathy."

Perhaps House might normally have responded with a joke, a witty but hurtful comment.

"Fine." He answered instead. Taking his cane in his hand, he pulled himself to his feet and stood, then offered a hand out to Chase, who clutched his ribs before standing, reminding House of the damage he had caused the other man. But looking at it, perhaps what he had given Chase was more than what he had taken away. But then that was House's way.

"You can sleep on the couch this time," he informed Chase as he put his free arm around the waist of the other man and helped him towards the door. Chase smiled. It was true. He was fed up of being smothered with sympathy. And he didn't expect to get any from House.

* * *

House wouldn't offer any sympathy, but he couldn't deny that something had changed between the two of them. Or perhaps it was just that he had acknowledged to himself that he did give a shit. He wouldn't offer sympathy, but he would offer silent empathy.

* * *

"You've got to get him back to the hospital," Wilson argued over the wall that separated the two balconies. "You've got to get him psychiatric help. You can't just leave him there in your apartment all alone." House merely stared nonchalantly out at the sky view, peeling an orange that he had pilfered from Wilson's lunch tray. Wilson knew for a fact that House didn't like oranges. That was why he had chosen it.

House didn't turn his attention away from the orange. "The goodies are all locked away," he told Wilson in a voice that was meant to be assuring.

"But Chase isn't." Wilson commented. Realising the implications of what he'd said, Wilson hurried to go back on himself. "I don't mean in an institution. I mean… what if he runs again? It might take more to find him again." House glanced across at his friend, then answered simply, "he won't." Wilson refrained from sighing exasperatedly, knowing it was better to conceal such emotions from House. He started on a new tack.

"Chase needs psychological help. You must realise that." He tried.

"I listen when he talks." House responded, throwing the last of the peel in the bin. Wilson looked at him, his eyebrows raised, beyond his voluntary control.

"Because you're really known for inducing sanity in fellow human beings." He was unable to keep the incredulity from his voice. House merely glanced back up at him, his expression unreadable, before throwing the untouched orange into the bin on top of the peel. Catching Wilson's eye as he turned to head back in, he stated, "sour", before closing the door behind him.

* * *

House sat on one end of the couch, and Chase sat on the other. The remote was firmly glued to House's hand. A repeat of a '93 baseball game illuminated the room with garishly green light.

"What were you thinking?" House spoke out of the blue, but clearly, and didn't remove his gaze from the television. Chase didn't need to ask to know what House was talking about. It wasn't the first time House had asked the question, and each time he asked it, Chase tried to answer it, as much for himself as for anything else. It wasn't that the answers he had given previously were necessarily lies. They just weren't the whole truth, because Chase didn't know the whole truth yet.

For a number of minutes, the only sound that could be heard was the fuzzy cheer of the phantom crowd, mob mentality at its greatest. The question might have drifted off with the particles of air through which it was spoken, dissociating, fading into the distance so that its meaning was confused, unanswered, nothing but atoms.

"I won't say I wasn't thinking, because I was." The silence continued. Though the television continued to babble away in the background, the sound was empty, Chase couldn't hear it, and neither could House, as both minds focused on the gaping silence, silence into which words might drop and never find their way back out. "But there are different kinds of thoughts; there are idle thoughts, the ones that build up over time without necessarily ever really having any real thought put into them. They're controlled by circumstance, actions, not thoughts. They pervade your life, they block out everything else, until there's little room for any kind of other thought at all.

"But then sometimes, something will prompt you to think deeper. It's usually the little things. The way the tracks of a railway track gleam at night, the silence that envelopes you when you're by yourself, even if there are other people around you, but when you're alone with your thoughts, nothing can impinge upon you. And sometimes when you have a thought like that, some might even call it a revelation, your perspective changes. And it might not be life changing; it might only make you think of particular tree in a different way, or a person, or a place. The same way that if you visit a place that you knew well as a child, and you go back as an adult, it's completely incomparable, as if something real and dimensional has really shifted, when all it really is, is a change in your own mind. But the two realities are irreconcilable.

"Sometimes, of course, you think you're having a revelation when it's actually nothing of the sort, and they can be the most destructive thoughts of all, more so than idle thoughts.

"The only way that I can think to describe it is that… that day, it was the end of a period of idle thought. An unbreakable period, inescapable. It didn't make it any less real, those were the only thoughts I was capable of. It was the inevitable end. The only way that things could go at that moment. I wanted to die.

"But then someone threw a spanner in the works." Chase's lips twitched at the corners, an almost smile. "And sometime in the path between then and now, I seem to have had a revelation. I don't want to die anymore. Of course, it may yet turn out to have been a false revelation, and then… then who knows what will happen? But for the moment I'm Ok." Chase's voice had diminished to a whisper. He stared at his knees, suddenly realising what it was his mind had been trying to work out over the past few weeks in the many hours of solitude, and somehow, talking to House, without expecting an answer, without expecting any reaction beyond that that a rock might give, suddenly he felt part of the world again.

House remained silent. He hadn't known Chase been thinking quite so hard over the time that he had been staying on his couch. Half of him was tempted to scoff at Chase's attempt to explain reality, but even though he wasn't quite sure that the words made sense to him, with their almost childlike delivery, somewhere in there, there was a sentiment that captured his own imagination. He didn't believe that Chase was "Ok", not by most peoples' standards. But he knew that Chase had moved away from where he was.

House stood and limped into the kitchen, opening the cupboard and removing a number of bottles. House had taken Chase off the drip the day before (this time, Wilson had at least had official approval to take the drugs, much to his relief). Counting out the pills so quickly that he might have appeared callous to a lesser trained eye, House switched on the tap and poured a glass of water, then returned to the couch and stood before Chase.

"Time to take your happy pills." He stated as he thrust the hand containing the pills towards Chase. Chase didn't say anything, didn't even look at House as he took the pills and the glass of water from House, but the corners of his mouth once again twitched into something that resembled a smile.

"Go to sleep," House said as he retreated into his bedroom. Chase continued to stare at his knees for an unidentifiable period of time before he finally relented and laid down on the couch, but it wasn't the blank stare of days before. There was an air of wisdom to it, an understanding.

* * *

House shut the door carefully, then leaned his back against it. Withdrawing his pills from his pocket, he tipped some out onto his palm and contemplated them for a moment. "Time to take your happy pills", he whispered to himself. House looked intently at the plain brown covers on his bed, and thought back to the young man lying on the couch in the other room, and wondered if his own perception on the world hadn't shifted somewhat over the past few weeks. Not in a glaringly obvious, evangelical sort of way, but somewhere within him, in some part of his brain that for all his medical genius he couldn't quite put his finger on.

House crossed the distance to the bed, and lay down at exactly the same moment as Chase did.

* * *

Chase awoke on the now familiar couch bed, and yawned, stretching as he did so, revelling in the pain free movement. It was early; he had set his alarm. Outside, the sky was still dark, though the morning chorus had already begun, and the stars had faded as the first vestiges of light began to sweep over the rain soaked city. Beside the couch, House's sports bag was once again packed with Chase's clothes. Chase wriggled his toes under the warmth of the covers and pulled himself into a sitting position, feeling only a slight twinge from his ribs as he did so.

After a number of minutes, as the bird song began to die down, and the inky black sky was starting to turn to a washed out shade of grey, Chase swung his legs over the edge of the couch and began to get dressed.

Chase had been at House's apartment for two weeks. Whilst House wasn't often openly nice to him, Chase hadn't been treated like the House slave that he might have expected to be, once he was up and on his feet again. House had cared for Chase's medical needs silently, and when Chase had begun to talk, without explanation, without warning, House had listened, without requiring an explanation, without requiring a warning.

Chase pulled on the sneakers that he seemed to have adopted from House, and looked around the room, the essence of House.

A sudden clunking noise distracted Chase from his almost nostalgic musings. Chase contemplated running, but then realised, he didn't really need to. The door opened, and House appeared, looking even more dishevelled than normal in a washed out queen t and a pair of boxers that just revealed gouged flesh, if you peered closely enough.

"Going somewhere?" he questioned. Chase smiled a wan smile.

"I'll see you tomorrow at 8," he replied, lifting his bag over his shoulder and turning towards the door.

His hand over the handle, Chase hung his head and offered, "I'm not escaping." There was silence for a moment, and Chase didn't move, as if waiting for approval.

"Don't be late," said House, turning and heading towards the shower.

Chase smiled, a secret smile, a real smile, pushing the door open, stepping into the corridor, and pausing to say good morning as he passed the door man.

Placing his hand on the brass door knob of the oak door that led to the outside world, Chase twisted with a deliberate air. The door swung open and Chase smelled the clean air, the city cleansed by the rainfall. Everything was washed with the pure drops, still not quite clean, but then, when was anything ever clean? Chase stepped out into the morning light.

* * *

­­­­­­­­­­­­­Fin

* * *

Thanks so much to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, and I'm sorry that I haven't got round to replying to everyone who I would have liked to. For anyone who has enjoyed it and hoped for more, I'm afraid that's it for the foreseeable future, but drop me a line to know what you thought! 


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